5. ESTUDIO MERCADO
5.3 INVESTIGACIÓN DE MERCADO
5.3.3 La Oferta
The IPCC’s evolution after 1988 increasingly marginalised the roles of the WMO and UNEP while US influence increased considerably through its scientists and
bureaucrats as well as through new actors such as the Global Climate Coalition and the Climate Council, which represented US fossil fuel interests and also aligned with the interests of other oil-‐producing economies (Agrawala 1998b; see also Hoppe, Wesselink & Cairns 2013). The IPCC’s role in providing scientific data informing international climate change treaties led to attempts by these actors to discredit the IPCC and its reports in the lead-‐up to the 1992 Rio Conference, where the UNFCCC was due to be adopted (Agrawala 1998b). These events resulted in the IPCC
overhauling its processes in an attempt to protect its legitimacy.121 The first round of changes gave representatives of governments and international institutions such as the World Bank and the OECD a greater role in selecting report contributors and reviewers (Agrawala 1998b). The 1993 changes also opened up the review of IPCC assessments to participating countries’ “national experts and other interested parties” and stipulated that government representatives had to approve the newly-‐ introduced ‘Summary for Policymakers’ (SPM) by agreeing on its contents line-‐by-‐ line (Agrawala 1998b; IAC 2010).122
121 Skodvin (2000) identifies two major revisions of the IPCC’s rules of procedure
between its inception in 1988 and the year 2000, one in 1993 and the other in 1999. Skodvin’s critique of these revisions focuses on how they led to further
bureaucratisation within the IPCC and how time-‐consuming they were to implement. The second revision of the IPCC’s rules of procedure in 1999 established a system of review editors whose responsibility it was to evaluate and incorporate comments from reviewers into the reports and new procedures for the endorsement of the Synthesis Report, requiring this document to be ‘adopted’ (rather than ‘approved’) subject to a ‘section-‐by-‐section’ approval (Skodvin 2000)
122 Contrasting this approach of trying ‘to buy global credibility amongst governments’
with ‘the distinctly activist stance’ taken by some of the IPCC’s predecessors in order to ‘effect prompt policy outcomes,’ Agrawala (1998b, p. 629, emphasis in original) reaches the surprising conclusion that “Neither approach is implicitly superior” as both
catalyzed policymakers. With the benefit of hindsight, however, it is clear that the IPCC approach has not been effective, having had very little impact on reducing GHG
Now an established intergovernmental mechanism that has been operational for nearly two decades, the IPCC describes its main task as being to provide “assessment reports on the state of knowledge on climate change” at regular intervals, and its restricted mandate is reflected in the statement that one of its most important principles is to produce reports that are ‘policy relevant’ but not ‘policy prescriptive’ (IPCC 2010).123 Rather than conducting new research, IPCC reports assess the most recently published and peer-‐reviewed scientific literature on climate change and related issues, but in the absence of such literature (which often is the case on issues such as adaptation), they also include information obtained from ‘grey literature’, which refers to government reports and work published by international
organisations (IPCC 2010). The volunteer scientists and experts conducting the assessments and writing the reports are organised into three Working Groups (WGs): WGI assesses and reports on the physical science basis of climate change, “including attribution of past change and projections of future change”; WGII builds on the information assessed by WGI and focuses on the expected impacts of global warming on socioeconomic and natural systems; and WGIII reports on possible policy responses to the effects identified by WGII (IAC 2010, p. 6; Luton 2015). This separation between the natural and social sciences is one way in which the IPCC can be controlled by governments and various other stakeholders: the physical science that provides proof that global warming is accelerating and that action to mitigate it is urgently required is the domain of WGI, while the social science discipline of economics dominates both the possible ‘socioeconomic’ impacts and the ‘policy relevant’ information presented in WGII and WGIII assessment reports (Corbera et al. 2015; Hulme & Mahoney 2010).124
scientists, if it could have been achieved, may have at least partially helped mitigate some of the additional anthropogenic global warming locked in by the increasing GHG emissions in the three decades since scientists became aware of the severity of this issue.
123 Refer to Luton (2015) for a comprehensive argument against this claim of ‘policy
neutrality’ within the IPCC.
124 Boehmer-‐Christiansen (1994a, p. 10) draws attention to the significance of the label
“‘socio-‐economic’ system” as “it indicated that this group [WGII] too was not interested in society but in that vague and undefined apolitical entity called a socio-‐economic ‘system’.” In their discussion of the practical and political decisions involved when the IPCC was being established, Hecht & Tirpak (1995, p. 385) identify WGIII’s work as ‘the
Aligned with this division of labour between the natural and the social sciences, the IPCC’s assessment results are published in three WG reports that include “chapters on specific topics; a Technical Summary of the chapter contents; and a Summary for Policymakers, which highlights the key findings of the assessment (IAC 2010, p. 8).125 As mentioned previously, the SPMs are subject to line-‐by-‐line approval by
government representatives.126 This is a crucial mechanism that government representatives use to control the dissemination of information to the media (and through them, to the public) as these summaries are more likely to be read given the length and complexity of IPCC reports (Schrope 2001; Hajer 2012).127 But
government control of the IPCC’s work is far more extensive even than this, as evidenced by an examination of Figure 8 below, which summarises IPCC processes and procedures and shows how government representatives exert an influence at almost every stage of the IPCC process, including setting its mandate, establishing the scope of its investigations, electing an IPCC Bureau and Chair for the duration of the assessment, and nominating authors and review editors. As Ravindranath (2010, p. 27), who participated in producing eight IPCC reports, explains: “The most
powerful body of the IPCC that is responsible for making all the crucial decisions, starting from the contents and procedures to the final approval of the reports, is the ‘IPCC panel’ that consists of representatives of all the governments under the UN….
most contentious’ as it controls which ‘policy relevant’ information is selected for inclusion. They also draw attention to how competing views within and between US scientific and other state agencies about which WG the US should chair in the first IPCC meeting were resolved in favour of its chairing WGIII.
125 The IPCC has published five major assessment reports to date: the First Assessment
Report (FAR) in 1990, while policymakers were negotiating the UNFCCC; the Second Assessment Report (SAR) in 1995, which was used to inform the Kyoto Protocol negotiations; the Third Assessment Report (TAR) in 2001; the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) in 2007; and the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) in 2013/2014 (IPCC n.d.). The IPCC plans to complete the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) in 2021/2022 (IPCC website).
126 There are three levels of endorsement of IPCC reports, the strongest of which is
‘approval’ and involves ‘detailed line by line discussion and agreement’ by government representatives while ‘adoption’, which is used for the Synthesis Report is subject to ‘section by section’ agreement. ‘Acceptance’ is the weakest form of endorsement and signifies that the material “presents a comprehensive, objective and balanced view of the subject matter” (IPCC, n.d.).
127 According the Hajer (2012, p. 459), “IPCC reports are 3000-‐plus pages of summaries
So [the] IPCC is not an organization with its own agenda to promote or make its own rules, it is continuously controlled and supervised by this panel.”
10 Climate change assessments | Review of the processes and procedures of the IPCC
Figure 1.2 Process for preparing an IPCC Assessment Report. The initial steps (scoping and Bureau election) take place over a few years and several meetings. In this diagram, ‘governments’ are representatives of ministries or federal agencies and ‘experts’ are generally scientists from academia, government agencies, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations. In general, the IPCC Secretariat facilitates the work of the Panel and supports scoping, Bureau election, government nominations, and report approval. The Technical Support Units assist the Working Group Co-chairs and Synthesis Report writing team and support author selection and report writing and review.
Governments and experts (including the Bureau) develop the scope of the report; governments approve the outline and work plan
Working Group Co-chairs and Bureau select Coordinating Lead Authors (CLAs), Lead Authors (LAs), and Review Editors (REs) from
government and other nominations
CLAs and LAs choose Contributing Authors to provide specific input
CLAs and LAs prepare the first draft
Review by experts (including other authors) CLAs and LAs consider reviewer comments with assistance of REs and prepare the second draft and Summary for Policymakers
Review by same experts and governments
Working Group Reports Synthesis Report
Chair and Bureau selects writing team (led by IPCC chair)
Authors prepare the first draft
Review by experts and governments Authors consider reviewer comments and prepare the final draft
Line-by-line approval of Summary for Policy Makers and section-by-section adoption of synthesis by governments
Author Se lect io n Repo rt Wr iting and Re vi ew Repo rt Appr ov al Scopi ng and Bu re au Elec tion
Working Group Co-chairs invite experts nominated by governments, organizations, and other experts to review the first draft
Governments agree on the mandate of the Working Groups and the time frame for the report, and elect an IPCC Bureau and Chair for the duration of the assessment
CLAs and LAs consider reviewer comments with assistance of REs and prepare the final draft Circulation of final draft; governments are invited to comment on Summary for Policy Makers Line-by-line approval of Summary for Policy Makers and acceptance of report by governments
Governments and experts identify policy relevant topics; governments agree on the outline
Circulation of final draft; governments are invited to comment
Source: IAC (2010, p. 10)
Despite its limited mandate and all the other restrictions placed on IPCC authors, the research results on anthropogenic GHG emissions causing global warming, climate change, and ocean acidification cannot be denied and are published in the WGI reports. The tactic of designing the IPCC so that it has no role in recommending policies has nevertheless succeeded in delaying the adoption of the effective policies required to mitigate global warming. Given the concern raised within civil society by the irrefutable scientific evidence of anthropogenic global warming that is published in IPCC reports, however, US fossil fuel interests and their domestic and
international allies have had to resort to other tactics to block action on climate change.128 These tactics include sustained and sometimes even psychologically damaging attempts to discredit IPCC science and scientists.
Constructing competing ideas: Climate change denialist attacks on IPCC climate science and climate scientists
The tactic of discrediting IPCC reports was already evident with the GHW Bush Administration’s rejection of the First Assessment Report in 1990, as well as in the fossil-‐fuel funded Global Climate Coalition’s (GCC) extensive lobbying against climate change legislation and its “large-‐scale advertising blitz [which was] meant to assuage any trepidation the [US] public might have had about the climate change issue” in the late 1990s (Armitage 2005, p. 422). There are many instances of manufactured ‘climate change skepticism’ or, as the authors of the open letter ‘Deniers are not Skeptics’ (CSI 2015) more accurately describe it, ‘climate change denialism’;
however, three ‘controversies’ reported on extensively in the media and debated on social media are particularly noteworthy. These manufactured controversies have succeeded both in damaging the reputation of the IPCC science and scientists and in delaying taking the action required to mitigate additional global warming (Biddle & Leuschner 2015; Brulle 2014; Leuschner 2016; McAdam 2017; Ravindranath 2010) in an attempt to try to secure what Rockström et al. (2009) refer to as a ‘safe operating space’ for humanity.
128 While there are politicians, policymakers and representatives of business who also
share these civil society concerns about the effects of anthropogenic global warming they have, to date, been unable to counter powerful vested interests whose business models would be challenged by the required changes to the working of the global economy.
Since one of the central functions of IPCC reports is to inform UNFCCC negotiations (Adler & Hadorn 2014), it is not surprising that these three controversies occurred just before important UNFCCC milestone events. The first controversy occurred in the lead-‐up to the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and involved the ‘hockey stick’ graph published in the 2001 Third Assessment Report (TAR); the ‘climategate’ controversy, involving ‘leaked’ private emails between scientists whose work had been published in IPCC reports, coincided with the opening of the COP-‐15 climate summit in Copenhagen (where there were high expectations that the Kyoto Protocol would be extended and strengthened, as discussed in more detail later in this
chapter); and the public debates that greatly exaggerated the severity of a few errors in the regional chapters of the AR4 report occurred soon after the
controversial and disappointing outcome of COP-‐15. In effect, because IPCC reports threaten powerful vested interests, they (as well as the climate science they report on, and the climate scientists who work on them) are subject to attacks by climate change deniers who are ideologically opposed to regulating GHG emissions. This is reflected in the fact that subsequent inquiries into these controversies have
vindicated both the science and the conduct of the scientists who were attacked, as briefly discussed below.
The ‘hockey-‐stick’ graph controversy in the context of the Kyoto Protocol Climate scientist Jerry Mahlman coined the term ‘hockey-‐stick graph’ (Hamblyn 2009) to describe the shape of a curve depicting changes in the Earth’s temperature over several centuries (refer to Figure 9 below: the ‘hockey-‐stick’ shape is evident on the right-‐hand side of the curve). Since there are no recorded temperatures
extending back for a thousand years, climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes used a standard scientific procedure – temperature proxies obtained primarily from tree ring data -‐ to estimate the missing data in the northern hemisphere temperature records and published their findings in Nature in 1998 (this work is commonly referred to as MBH98) and in Geophysical Research Letters in 1999 (MBH99) (Connolly & Connolly 2014).
Lehman Brothers | The Business of Climate Change
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