The European Union, Britain and climate-vulnerable developing countries have raised concerns about delays to the next global assessment of climate change, by the UN’s climate science panel, after the US administration withdrew from the process.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body which brings together climate scientists from nearly 200 countries to assess the planet’s health, will meet in Hangzhou, China, next week to plan its next global report.
“It will be vital that all working group contributions to the Seventh Assessment Report are prepared in time,” the EU’s climate chief, Wopke Hoekstra, and ministers from 17 countries including Britain, Germany, France, Spain, the Marshall Islands and Guatemala said in a joint statement.
“We owe it to everyone suffering the impacts of the climate crisis now, and to future generations, to make decisions about our planet’s future on the basis of the best evidence and knowledge available to us,” the statement said.
The Trump administration has halted the participation of US scientists in the IPCC and will not attend its meeting in Hangzhou next week, Reuters reported on Thursday.
Officials said the countries behind the statement were concerned the report would now not be completed in time to inform the next Paris Agreement “stocktake” in 2028, when nearly 200 countries will assess their progress towards curbing climate change and agree tougher measures to avoid escalating warming.
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