Introduction
Almost 28 years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established. The main focus of this panel, created by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), was to combine scientific research on climate change (Agrawala, 1998). The IPCC consists of 3000 scientists and creates reports on the basis of already published scientific literature, instead of doing their own investigations. Participation to the IPCC is open to all member countries of both the WMO and the United Nations. Currently, they do have 195 members and the panel is formed by representatives from each member state. The role of the IPCC is however been under high contestation, due to their pushing statements that the most important factor on climate change is human activity and, not in the last place, their interference into the policy domains on climate change (O’Neill, 2009). In this paper, critical reflections will be made on the role of the IPCC in global environmental politics and also there will be wondered if the IPCC will preserve its authority in the field of global environmental politics. The leading question of this paper is: what are the criticisms on the IPCC and will these have impact on their authority? The second and third part will go into detail on this questions and in the conclusion the leading question will be answered and my own position will be elaborated.
What are the main criticism on the role of the IPCC? The IPCC have been under high scrutiny since several years due to different reasons which will be explained in this part of the paper.
Climategate
In November 2009, a hacker gained access to 1000 emails and approximately 3000 documents from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). In these sources, there is evidence founded about scientists who pervert data in order to point out that climate change is more rapidly going on than scientific research has shown (Jasanoff, 2010). One of the impacts of this Climategate was a growing dubiousness, especially among the climate sceptics, about the reliability of the IPCC. Next, more broadly in the scientific world, the scientific community got an revival on thinking about the conduction of research (Ma, Gao, Zeng and Shi, 2010). Public accountability of scientific research came more into account after the Climategate and peer review became more important. ‘Organized skepticism’ and the importance of ethics in doing research came to the fore ground among scientists about research that has been done. So, although the cause of the Climategate obviously cannot be called positive, it did have a positive impact on the scientific world in its entirety.
Doubtful estimations
One of the most well-known doubts in a IPCC report in 2007 about the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. The report mentioned that probably these glaciers will be completely melted by 2035. But this projection has been made by the Energy and Resources Institute of New Delhi. And this makes the projection very doubtful, because this Institute does have business ties with companies that could work on this problem and therefore benefit from it (Schiermeier, 2010). This makes the objectivity of the IPCC questionable. In 2009, India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests investigated the Himalayan glaciers and found that the glaciers are not melting and where they were actually melting, they will not have such enormous impact (Bagla, 2009). The mistake of the IPCC on the Himalayan glacier came mainly from a lack of coordination between the three different working groups who were working on this topic (Schiermeier, 2010). The source of the projection came from a telephone interview between a journalist and an Indian scientist (who was at that time a blurred person) in 1999. After the appearance of the claim in the New Scientist and a report from the World Wildlife Fund, the IPCC also implemented the projection (Davidson, 2010). Furthermore, critics say that the over jump of comments from reviewers who questioned the estimated facts about the melting of the glaciers have been neglected (Schiermeier, 2010). For the IPCC in order to avoid such errors, it would improve their credibility and internal validity and structure better if they also set up an working group who will give independent feedback on the process of making the reports and also create more coordination between the different working groups.
Production of the reports
Also one of the main points of critic on the IPCC is the way how knowledge about climate change is used. It is not completely clear of all the articles they use are really peer-reviewed. Some statements suggests they are, but other statements contradict this and state that they also make use of non-peer-reviewed literature (Davidson, 2010). Next, the scientists who are working at the IPCC do this on a voluntary basis and they don’t get payments from the IPCC. Critic has been given on this manner, because the time scientists will spend in working for the IPCC, comes at the expense of their own research. Further, this way of working without any payment will discourage other very qualified scientists from take participation in the IPCC (Committee on the Science of Climate Change, 2001; National Research Council, 2007). Second, there is much critic on the alleged role of the IPCC in politics and the shaping of policies on climate change. This is due to the fact that the IPCC is a self-governing institute who face many different political pressure and strict deadlines. Furthermore, the reports include always a ‘Summary for policymakers’ in which they work out the current knowledge on climate science, the impacts of climate change and the economic and social dimensions. These reports are approved word for word by the member governments (Miller and Edwards, 2001). In this way, the reciprocal influence of both the IPCC and the national governments can be doubted. Frederick Seitz, former president of both Rockefeller University, National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, has published an critical article on the process of peer-review within the IPCC. He stated that changes have been made in the reports about climate change ‘in the interests of promoting a particular political agenda’ (Miller and Edwards, 2001, p. 223). There is also some dubiousness about the way in which reports are ‘accepted’ or ‘approved’. According to Miller and Edwards (2001), most of the reports are ‘accepted’ instead of being ‘approved’. That is a huge difference, because acceptance does not definitely lead to action for tackling climate change, while approval does have far-reaching implications. For example, one of the summary from Working Group I (on climate science) has been ‘approved’, but Chapter 8 of the same report has been ‘acccepted’. Third, critical comments can be made on the participation of experts from the developing countries in the making of the reports. At the very beginning of the IPCC, they were not included at all, but in the early 1990s their first expression became true. But Hulme and Mahony (2010) pointed out that there is still no proportional distribution of both OECD countries and non-OECD countries. The OECD countries are represented between the 80 and 82 percent in the last three reports. The problem with the lagging participation of the developing countries in the IPCC is that in this way, developing countries will not contribute as much as they can to tackle climate problems. That is logical, because experts from their own regions are not participated in the Panel, and therefore they do trust it less than if that was the case. To create a worldwide environmental politic regime, it will be very necessary to include also a fair delegation of the developing countries into the IPCC.
Will the IPCC preserve their authority?
A very interesting question is if the IPCC will preserve their authority in the field of climate change, when considering all the unmistakable critic they have received in the last decades. In 1996, Elzinga (cited in Hulme and Mahony, 2010) mentioned the IPCC as ‘the privileged speaker and discursive leader’ in knowledge on climate change. But already in 1997, Simon Shackley, Programme Director and lecturer in Carbon Management and Carbon Policy at the University of Edinburgh, mentioned the question if the IPCC will retain its authority as an important expert institution on climate change (Hulme and Mahony, 2010). Shackley (1997, p.79) argues that ‘of particular concern is whether the IPCC can make its knowledge more socially relevant and trusted by bridging the gulf which exists between scientific experts and on-the-ground decision-makers and members of the public’. In the underlying years, the IPCC has undergone different organizational changes. For example, national governments does now have lesser impact on the process of the climate negotiations (Siebenhuner, 2003). But, as Rothman et al. (2009) suggest, more improvements have to be made, especially in communication about sources of pendency and in the use of more qualitative data. The IPCC do have a big impact on knowledge about climate change and also on public discourse on the topic and on policies that are created about climate change (Hulme and Mahony, 2010). According to Haas (1992), the IPCC has also played a significant role in the reinforcement of a worldwide epistemic community on climate change. An epistemic community is a transnational network of professionals with the same beliefs, with policy authority in their field of expertise. Furthermore, their membership is transactional, in the way that they want change instead of only doing research (Haas, 1990). Recent research has investigate the impact of the last four big report of the IPCC on scientific publications over the time and shows that each consecutive report was more cited than the report before. These researchers also stated that despite the negative feedback the IPCC in the last years has received, this does not have so much influence on their unique role and authority in the field of climate science worldwide. Furthermore, their research has shown that the reports of the IPCC are also spread more and more outside the area of climate science such as international relations or science about organizations. The IPCC have to be aware of this ongoing process, and it is more important than ever to be transparent about their way of doing research and publishing reports (Vasileiadou, Heimeriks and Petersen, 2011). Finally, as Girod, Wieka, Mieg and Hulme (2009) argue that in an area like climate science, with a great societal relevance, it is likely to connect scientific knowledge more and more to societal and policy-related problems in order to solve problems in the field of climate science as soon as possible. The IPCC is a typical example of an organization that operates on the boundary between science and policy.
Conclusion
Going back to the leading question of the paper: ‘what are the criticisms on the IPCC and will these have impact on their authority’, this last part will elaborate on the answer and includes the meaning of the writer. Several points of critic have been given on the process of writing reports at the IPCC. Not only on the way knowledge is used, but also on the manner on which politics are involved in the process and the question why much more experts from the developed world are involved in the process of writing the reports instead of experts from the developing world. After that, the question if the IPCC will preserve their authority in the field of climate science is analyzed and a cautious answer is given: yes, they will, due to their unique worldwide role in climate science, but they have to work on more transparency and connecting to societal and policy problems related to climate science. I think that the IPCC will indeed preserve their authorative role in this field, because they are the most well-known organization in the world of climate science worldwide. But to get more fame and influence, it is important to also include more experts from developing countries. Furthermore (and I think this is the most important one) the internal policy about communication and transparency should be adapted, as communication and transparency about the way they use research and involve politics into the process of making reports, is becoming more and more important in this world of growing networks, globalization and the use of internet. Maybe also an important step for the IPCC is to make the reports more locally based. They can do this by include experts from each country apart, because then countries by themselves does not have to translate the global facts about climate change into the local situation: that will save money and time.