IPCC plays safe, turns to govts

After a number of gaffes, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has asked governments around the world to nominate scientists to the panel that will review and finalise its fifth climate assessment report.

Updated on: Feb 16, 2010, 24:34:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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After a number of gaffes, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has asked governments around the world to nominate scientists to the panel that will review and finalise its fifth climate assessment report.

This move will ensure that the report’s accuracy and reliability is not the IPCC’s alone. The report will be released in 2014.

The IPCC recently expressed regret for its erroneous claim that most Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035. It apologized again for saying that 55 per cent of the Netherlands lies below sea level. In fact, it is only 26 per cent.

The IPCC intends to form three working groups. The first group will examine the scientific aspects of climate system and the change. The second group will study scientific, social and economic aspects of vulnerability to climate change and its impact on ecological systems and health impact. The third will study the mitigation possibilities to meet the challenge of climate change.

“The fifth assessment report will put greater emphasis on assessing the socio-economic aspects of climate change and its implications for sustainable development,” the letter written in mid-January to governments around the worlds, said.

The IPCC has asked governments to nominate scientists by March 12.

The IPCC has also clarified it will not do any research on its own but will use assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information, which is peer-reviewed.

The IPCC, in its fourth report, had been accused of using non-peer reviewed data to sensationalise the impact of climate change.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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