The IPCC in Organizational Suvival

Team Member: N. Waters

Blog Post

International Panel on Climate Change:

Balancing Autonomy and Authority

Introduction of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The IPCC was created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program. The IPCC aims to provide international governments, national governments, and local governments with scientific reports and data to influence and guide climate policy (IPCC). 

The IPCC has provided services as an institution by organizing "large-scale scientific collaboration" to assess climate research and recommend strategies to combat these findings for use by legislators in varying levels of government. The IPCC is also responsible for establishing credibility among diverse national governments, through means of centralization over climate data and research (IPCC). 

Appointment Process and Mechanisms

The IPCC has a formalized process for appointing contributors to report authors or review editors. Coordinating lead authors, lead authors, and review editors are nominated by IPCC Bureau members and observer organizations. They then agree on the relevance and outline of a report (Chan 2016). 

The contents of the contributor chapters are the responsibility of coordinating lead authors and lead authors. The report produced for a chapter consists of scientific, technical, and socio-economic information deemed most accurately available at time of publication. Editors consider the review of experts appointed by the Bureau to handle controversial reports. These reports are then dispersed amongst states within the IPCC (Chan 2016).

Currently, 34% of contributors are nominated from Europe, 28% are nominated from North America, 16% of contributors come from Asia, with Africa, Australia, and South America making up 8%, 7%, and 6% respectively (IPCC).  

Selection Bias and the Impacts of Appointment Processes and Mechanisms

Issues of selection bias in IPCC contributors risks alienating or skewing recommended policy towards or away from specific regions. Since over ⅓ of IPCC contributors are European, there exists a skew of research and policy that is hyperfocused on policies relevant to European issues (Lucas 2020). Further, if you were to include the 28% of nominees from North America, European-North American contributors constitute over half of the policy and chapters produced by the IPCC. This actually presents a negative effect of Anglo-centric policy design and can negatively impact states in Africa, South America, and Asia, since policy is more relevant to the issues presented by Europeans and Americans versus issues relevant to less influential, but mostly under nominated, regions. 

IPCC Accountability and Legitimacy

Like many autonomous international organizations, concerns over the accountability of non-elected IPCC contributors exercising legal and political authority exist. The Bureau-appointed contributor authors are accountable to the UN, however, they lack true accountability to the people their policies impact. Issues of controversial policy recommendations and incorrect policy reports have, in the past, tainted the record of the IPCC, and these incorrect reports were only corrected following internal review. Accountability must exist in review processes and thorough appointment considerations to provide accurate and reasonable reports to state agencies, especially if the IPCC hopes to maintain their position as premier authority on climate change. 

The issue of accountability in the IPCC directly ties to its legitimacy. Legitimacy concerns affect the ability of the IPCC to recommend climate input (Johnson 2010). Past instances of scientific data inaccuracy risk delegitimizing the organization in the eyes of the leaders within the UN and global citizens. There has, in recent years, been an implementation of a more stringent review process in order to reduce instances of inaccurate data, and there now even exists a complaint forum on the official IPCC website, (IPCC) in an attempt to decrease errors and return accountability to more individual persons, involved or not with the IPCC. This can have an effect of bolstering legitimacy. 

In order for the IPCC to positively maintain perceptions of accountability and legitimacy, the organization needs to actively engage with public discussions that call into question the worth of their reports. This is the best opportunity for the IPCC to demonstrate their expert knowledge and earn the trust of doubtful naysayers. 

Mitigation and Future Solutions

To effectively reform, the IPCC must take steps that legitimize unbiased policy proposals. This can be done in a number of ways. Their newly implemented system of individual-person reviews is a positive step towards the types of actions necessary for the IPCC to take (Carraro 2015). More review processes should be implemented in the reporting process in order to maintain that information is accurate, up-to-date, relevant, and not biased towards a Euro-American policy platform. Increased talks between contributors and policy makers should occur too, in an effort to decrease disagreement over the legitimacy of policy recommendations. Additionally, looking to other IGOs, such as the World Health Organization, could benefit the IPCC in their appointee process. Currently, the appointee and nomination process of the IPCC is more reminiscent of nepotistic favoring, than objective, merit-based nominations, like the WHO does. (Carraro 2015) Nominees should be aligned with the fundamental objectives of the IPCC to provide legitimate science on climate change, rather than ushering in leadership and contributors who may have ulterior reasons to enforce policy recommendations. (Lucas) Improvement in these areas could bolster tha ability of the IPCC to work more autonomously if there exists an increased sense of trust and respect for the work of the institution. Increased autonomy would be beneficial for the IPCC and would make it so that the IPCC has less responsibility to cater to the public and mass sentiments. The IPCC, if it were to gain increased autonomy, could function without feeling demands of nations seeking policy guidance only relevant to individual nations. Additionally, with increased autonomy and decreased oversight, the IPCC can control its budget, enforcement measures, and areas of research how it sees fit (Chan 2016). The IPCC has provided a great service to the globe since its inception and in order to continue to be respected as a leading authority in their field, they should take active steps to reform processes that aren’t beneficial to their ultimate purpose.

Works Cited

Carraro, Carlo et al. 2015. “The IPCC at a Crossroads: Opportunities for Reform.” Science. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aac4419 

(February 22, 2022). 

Chan, Gabriel., Carroro, Carlo., Edenhofer, Ottamar., Kolstad, Charles., & Stavins, Robert (2016). Reforming the IPCC’s assessment of Climate Change 

             Economics. Climate Change Economics, 07(01), 1640001. https://doi.org/10.1142/s2010007816400017 

Johnson, Tana. 2010. “Guilt by Association: The Link between States' Influence and the Legitimacy of Intergovernmental Organizations 

            - The Review of International Organizations.” SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11558-010-9088-z (February 22, 2022). 

Lucas, Adam. 2020. “Risking the Earth Part 2: Power Politics and Structural Reform of the IPCC and UNFCCC.” Climate Risk Management.

            https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212096320300504 (February 22, 2022). 

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” IPCC. https://www.ipcc.ch/ (February 22, 2022).