The IPCC deadlock is now in its fifth meeting. Governments have failed to agree on something that would normally take minutes: when the world’s leading climate science body should publish its next assessment. The 195 member states meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from October 12 to 16, and Reuters reports that many see the session as the last chance to fix publication dates in time for the 2028 UN climate talks.
What the IPCC deadlock argument is about
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has informed every major UN climate agreement for three decades, is preparing its seventh assessment cycle, known as AR7. It will produce three reports: on the science of climate change, on vulnerability and adaptation, and on options to curb warming. The panel’s co-chairs have proposed approving all three by September 2028, ahead of the second global stocktake, the Paris Agreement’s five-yearly review of progress, which concludes at COP33 in November 2028.
Several countries, including India, China, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kenya, want more time, and want the second and third reports pushed into 2029. The coalition pressing for 2028, led by European, Latin American and small island states, argues that otherwise negotiators will rely on reports published in 2021-22. Much has changed since: Reuters notes that 2024 was the first year global temperatures averaged more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Two arguments, one calendar
Those who want more time say the 2028 schedule is too tight for scientists from poorer countries. Some struggle to publish new research before the cut-off, or cannot take unpaid leave from their jobs to work for the IPCC. “If you have a process that goes very quickly,” Kenya’s delegate Joyce Kimutai said, it would not be inclusive. About half of the lead authors and editors chosen for AR7 come from developing or transition economies, according to the IPCC.
Those who want 2028 say the delay is political. Several of the strongest advocates for more time are large oil producers, and one IPCC editor told Reuters that “the elephant in the room is the politics”. Russia’s economy ministry called that framing a deliberate misrepresentation and said aligning the reports with UN talks raises questions about the IPCC’s independence.
An equity question beneath the dates
India’s representative at the IPCC, Thiagarajan Jayaraman, argues that the models used to assess warming don’t give enough weight to the historical emissions of wealthy countries or to poorer countries’ development needs. In his view, such issues of equity are sometimes ducked. India’s longstanding position is that countries that grew rich on fossil fuels should make the deepest cuts, while some industrialised nations want large emerging economies to cut too. The dispute over a date is therefore also a dispute over whose science, and whose burden, the next report will reflect.
What is at stake in Addis Ababa
Climate Analytics has warned that failing to align the reports with the stocktake could remove the IPCC from the central formal process, leaving space for inputs not grounded in its consensus assessments. Slovak climatologist Jozef Pecho told Reuters that the room for cherry-picking and distorting science would grow without an updated assessment. The next reports will also be the first to include chapters on climate finance and irreversible harm, issues important to many developing countries.
The institution is under strain as well. The United States, its biggest funder, quit the IPCC in January, and the deadlock is unprecedented in its history.
By October 16, governments will have either agreed a date or pushed the decision to another meeting that may be too late. The panel’s authors can only be as useful as the calendar allows, and that is now in the hands of the same governments the science is meant to inform.
