A group led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, joined by India and China, is pressing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to postpone publication of the Seventh Assessment Report from 2028 to 2029. The IPCC opened a meeting in Addis Ababa this week to discuss AR7, which was scheduled for 2028 to feed into the UN climate summit COP33 and the 2028 global stocktake of Paris Agreement commitments. Ministers from 34 members of the High Ambition Coalition, together with the EU and the Least Developed Countries grouping, urged the IPCC to expedite publication instead. Jess Gasper, minister for the Marshall Islands, warned against letting political interests determine which science the world hears, and Sierra Leone environment minister Jiwoh Emmanuel Abdulai said the Paris agreement depends on the best available science guiding negotiations. The Guardian notes AR7 is expected to be more urgent than previous assessments because greenhouse gases and climate impacts have continued to rise, and global temperatures have already exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Pushing AR7 past 2028 would risk depriving COP33 negotiators of the latest synthesis of climate science when governments face the global stocktake and the Paris Agreement’s ratchet mechanism.
