Representatives from nearly 200 countries are set to meet in Antalya, Türkiye, from November 9 to 20 for the 31st session of COP, the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), better known as the annual UN climate summit.
Türkiye is hosting the meeting, while Australia will lead the negotiations between governments. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has said that global efforts to limit warming are falling short; scientists have said climate change fuelled wildfires that surged across Europe this summer and also played a role in the landslides and flash floods that devastated Nepal.
Global temperatures reached 1.63°C above the pre-industrial level (the 1850-1900 average that scientists use as a baseline) in September, continuing a new run of months above 1.5°C which started in August and is expected to continue into 2027, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service reported on October 12.
Against the backdrop of this urgency, governments are entering an already fraught arena after the last meeting of the members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was suspended with disagreements.
The IPCC is the panel that assesses climate science for governments, and its findings feed into what countries negotiate at these summits. Its members could not agree on when the panel’s next major reports should be ready.
What the IPCC does
{{/usCountry}}The IPCC is the panel that assesses climate science for governments, and its findings feed into what countries negotiate at these summits. Its members could not agree on when the panel’s next major reports should be ready.
What the IPCC does
{{/usCountry}}The IPCC is an intergovernmental scientific body, set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the UNEP, which does not conduct original research. Instead, scientists from around the world review published studies to produce summaries on the knowledge about climate change for policymakers.
“The IPCC reviews calls from countries for special reports, and also gets input on topics for assessment reports. It holds meetings to establish approved outlines which establish a set of chapters and topics for each chapter,” explained Ben Orlove, professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and lead author of the 2019 IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.
Three reports are published out of this analysis: Working Group I, which assesses the physical science of climate change; Working Group II, which examines impacts, adaptation and vulnerability; and Working Group III, which focuses on mitigation, or cutting the emissions that cause warming. A synthesis report then collates the findings of all three. Together, these make up an assessment report. The last one, the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), was published in stages between 2021 and 2023. The seventh, AR7, is now being prepared.
“This work is carried out by hundreds of authors, equally from developed and developing countries, who have volunteered their time for preparing up-to-date scientific assessments for informing global policy related to climate change as well as informing a broader audience on the subject,” said Raman Sukumar, an ecologist at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and vice-chair of Working Group II.
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At the last meeting
IPCC’s member states met on October 12 to 16 in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for a plenary, a session of all member governments that takes the panel’s main decisions, by consensus where possible.
The meeting was seen as the last chance to resolve an over three-year-long impasse about the timeline for the panel’s latest assessment report, AR7. It was suspended after it ran over its planned duration on the last day, following which Jim Skea, the IPCC chair, said in a statement, “While we successfully concluded the bulk of our agenda items, including agreement on a new process to ensure the appropriate application and use of artificial intelligence, we have yet to reach consensus on two important topics: the timelines for the three Working Group contributions to the Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) and the IPCC budget that will support our work.”
Agreeing on the timeline was the main agenda of the IPCC meeting, along with a budget for the ongoing cycle. The discussions on the review timeline and the IPCC budget “remain open”, and the panel’s deliberations will resume at the earliest opportunity, the IPCC said.
The impasse
Key to the deadlock about the timeline is the Global Stocktake (GST), a review held every five years under the 2015 Paris Agreement of how far the world has come in meeting its climate goals. The first concluded at COP28 in 2023, and the second is due to conclude in November 2028, at COP33.
The panel has been discussing how to align the seven-year cycle of IPCC assessments with the five-year interval of GST since 2017. A dedicated Task Group was established to address the issue, but it concluded its work in 2020 without an accepted solution.
Many countries support ensuring that the IPCC’s assessments feed into the second GST, but there are countries who oppose it, arguing that science should not be pressured to match the pace of political decision-making. The options for longer timelines would see the report on mitigation delayed until 2029, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, an independent reporting service on UN environment and development negotiations, said.
Saudi Arabia, India, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Syria, and Belarus preferred delivery of the adaptation and mitigation reports (Working Groups II and III) in 2029, the Bulletin reported. They argued that an earlier delivery would put unnecessary pressure on government reviewers and compromise scientific rigor and inclusivity.
But Sukumar believes that at least the Working Group II report, which is the adaptation report, should be delivered before COP33. “I think it would be in the interest of the countries in the Global South if the adaptation report is delivered before GST… In the last several years, there's been a shift in focus from mitigation to adaptation needs of developing countries. If adaptation report is delivered before COP33, it can inform policy the negotiations,” he said.
Many scientists believe the debate over timeline had to be resolved at the Addis Ababa meeting, largely because the panel also had to agree on a budget for the remainder of this cycle. These two issues are intertwined, as the budget partly depends on the timing of the reports, anticipated workload, and other requirements. An agreed budget is essential for the continued operation of the Working Groups, the Secretariat, and other aspects of the IPCC’s work.
The panel has faced growing budgetary deficits since 2024. Skea said the current level of contributions at CHF 3.5 million (the IPCC budgets in Swiss francs, as it secretariat headquartered in Geneva) risks non-completion of AR7. He explained that safeguarding the IPCC’s long-term financial sustainability will require a further and prompt increase in annual contributions beyond CHF 5.8 million, a sharp decrease in annual expenditures, or a combination thereof. The panel’s biggest funder, the United States, quit in January 2026, when President Donald Trump ordered the US out of 66 international organisations, including the IPCC and the UNFCCC. Under the previous Joe Biden administration, the US contributed an average of $1.7 million annually to the IPCC Trust Fund.
Several countries have supported the secretariat’s suggestions for cost-saving measures, and called on existing donors to increase their contributions.
India, along with Iraq, Syria, Burkina Faso and Tunisia, opposed discussing the budget before finalising the work plan, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported. Russia suggested suspending discussion on the budget while the panel addressed the work plan. India also suggested the IPCC should continue to call for voluntary contributions.
While Skea acknowledged the challenges facing the panel, he reminded participants that the IPCC’s scientific work was progressing. “The engine room of the IPCC is working, and it’s healthy,” he had said in his closing remarks.
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Why the reports matter
IPCC reports carry weight with governments, and in the past contributed to a commitment in the Paris Agreement to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, alongside its main goal of keeping warming well below 2°C.
Its reports are also used by governments to plan their responses to climate change and have been cited in international court rulings, including the International Court of Justice's July 2025 advisory opinion on states’ climate obligations, which relied primarily on IPCC reports.
“The IPCC not only addresses science and policy-relevant research on its own; its timing is linked to UNFCCC timing… The IPCC always says it is policy-relevant but policy-neutral,” Orlove said.
Thiagarajan Jayaraman, a scientist who represents India at the IPCC, told Reuters in October that it was “short-sighted” to suggest the value of the body’s work rests solely on contributing to the 2028 UN talks, where the second GST is expected to conclude.
Small island developing states (SIDS), island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, and the least developed countries (LDC) group, which negotiate together as a bloc, have stressed that IPCC reports provide critical insights into the challenges they face and help to ensure their needs are addressed in international climate negotiations.
The AR7 reports are expected to explain the disproportionate impacts of climate change on developing countries, and the evidence from these reports could support their case for economic loss and damage compensation – money to help developing countries bear the immediate costs of climate-fuelled disasters such as storms and floods. Countries agreed to set up a fund for this at COP27 in Egypt in 2022.
The reports will also provide updated scientific bases for national adaptation and mitigation plans for all countries, and will be particularly important to those countries with limited capacity, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported.
The next IPCC reports will attempt to fill knowledge gaps about the overshoot of 1.5°C-threshold, in which warming passes that level for a time before being brought back below it, including the potential consequences of interventions to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, such as machines that capture it directly from the air.
What the delay costs
“The current impasse is extremely unfortunate as it impacts not only the budgets and timelines for delivery of the reports but also for carrying out the core mandate, namely the conduct of Lead Author Meetings (LAMs) of the various IPCC Working Group. The immediate casualty is LAM3 of Working Group 2 scheduled for early January 2027 in Guatemala,” Sukumar said.
On the lack of consensus on a budget, Skea emphasised at the closing plenary that authors deserve clarity about the timing and duration of their commitments to the IPCC and expressed confidence that the panel was fully aware of the organisational and reputational consequences of its decision on this issue.
“I already sense frustration among authors who had set aside time to attend this meeting and even made travel arrangements. I have been an IPCC author since the early 1990s and can understand their angst,” Sukumar said.