UN Panel To Release Report On Efforts To Curb Climate Change

A UN-backed panel was set to release a highly anticipated scientific report on Monday on international efforts to curb climate change before global temperatures reach dangerous levels.

Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are considered the most authoritative assessments of the state of global warming, its impacts and the measures being taken to tackle it.

Negotiations between governments and scientists to finalize the summary for policymakers dragged on past the original deadline until late on Sunday, pushing back the planned publication by several hours.

Governments agreed in the 2015 Paris Accord to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) this century. But with temperatures already more than 1.1C higher than the pre-industrial baseline, many experts say that’s only possible with drastic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

The cut-off point for data in the report was last fall, meaning that the impact of the war in Ukraine wasn’t included by the authors.

Rouven Stubbe, an analyst at the consultancy Berlin Economics, who wasn’t involved in the report, said there is a risk that the geopolitical and economic turmoil caused by the conflict could disrupt efforts to reduce emissions.

“I think the difficult thing will be that politically we have to maintain course,” he said. “Especially now, with… high energy prices, there are already voices that say we should ease the (European) emissions trade system,” that encourages companies to avoid heavily polluting forms of energy.