The UN’s climate science panel has failed to agree on when to publish its next major report after a week of talks between sharply divided countries in Addis Ababa, France’s climate envoy Benoît Faraco said late on Friday.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, publishes assessment reports every five to seven years that are widely regarded as the leading scientific reference on climate change.
The panel is now working on its seventh assessment report, with an initial proposal to complete it by the end of 2028.
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In a post on LinkedIn, Faraco said some countries were putting pressure on the process to delay publication. He said the next report would play “an essential role” in shaping the climate commitments expected in 2028 and 2030.
He warned that the deadlock over the publication date could lead to “costly lost time” in tackling climate change.
If published in 2028, the report could help inform the 33rd UN climate conference at the end of that year, when countries are due to carry out the second global stocktake of efforts made since the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Supporters of that timetable argue that policymakers would then have stronger scientific evidence at hand when deciding on more ambitious action.
However, countries including India, Saudi Arabia and China are pushing for the report to be published in 2029.
The IPCC said the main agenda items remained under discussion and that negotiations would resume “as soon as possible.”
Seven Belgian scientists are among the experts involved in preparing the report.
