By Abbas Nazil
Saudi Arabia and Russia, alongside India and China, are pushing to block the release of a major global climate assessment, seeking to delay its publication until 2029 in a move that has drawn strong condemnation from climate-vulnerable nations.
The four countries are reportedly leading efforts at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to postpone the seventh assessment report, known as AR7, which was originally scheduled for publication in 2028.
Their proposal, which argues that developing countries need more opportunities to contribute to the scientific findings, could delay the United Nations-backed assessment by a year, raising concerns that it will weaken international climate action.
The move has faced fierce opposition from countries particularly vulnerable to climate change, who warn that blocking the report would undermine global efforts to tackle rising temperatures and their devastating consequences.
Ministers from 34 members of the High Ambition Coalition, alongside the European Union and the Least Developed Countries grouping, have called for the report to be delivered sooner rather than later, insisting that the delay is politically motivated.
Jess Gasper, a minister for the Marshall Islands, said political interests must not determine which scientific evidence the international community considers in tackling climate change.
Sierra Leone’s Environment Minister, Jiwoh Emmanuel Abdulai, also stressed that the Paris Agreement could only achieve its objectives if climate negotiations continued to be guided by the best available scientific knowledge.
The push to delay the report comes as global temperatures have already exceeded the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold above pre-industrial levels for the first time over a calendar year in 2024, while projections indicate that temperatures could rise beyond 1.8 degrees Celsius even if countries fulfil their existing emissions targets.
The 2028 assessment is considered particularly important because it is expected to inform discussions at the United Nations climate summit, COP33, scheduled for later that year.
That summit is expected to assess countries’ progress towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions and determine whether stronger measures are necessary to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement.
Climate scientists have warned that blocking the report until 2029 could weaken the international response at a time when the effects of global warming are becoming increasingly severe.
Rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, heatwaves, flooding and other extreme weather events are already affecting communities across the world, threatening ecosystems, food production, water supplies and livelihoods.
The IPCC’s previous assessment, published in three parts between 2021 and 2022, warned that failure to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions could lead to increasingly dangerous and, in some cases, irreversible climate impacts.
With greenhouse gas concentrations continuing to rise, the forthcoming assessment is expected to provide updated scientific evidence on the scale of the crisis and the measures required to limit further warming.
Supporters of the delay argue that developing countries have historically had less influence over climate research and scientific modelling, much of which has been produced in Europe and North America.
However, Claudio Angelo of Brazil’s Observatório do Clima said the concerns about scientific inequality should not be used to justify blocking the assessment.
He acknowledged that climate models developed predominantly in wealthy countries could contain biases but argued that extending the IPCC’s timetable by a few months would not resolve the underlying problem.
Angelo also questioned why countries with significant financial and technological resources could not invest more in developing scientific models that would contribute to international climate assessments.
The controversy has also exposed divisions among environmental organisations, with some civil society groups supporting calls for greater representation of developing countries in climate science, even as others remain concerned about the consequences of delaying the report.
Although the IPCC is expected to conduct its scientific work independently of political interference, governments participating in the process must approve key documents known as summaries for policymakers.
These summaries accompany the comprehensive scientific assessments and help governments understand the findings and use them in climate negotiations.
The dispute therefore highlights the challenge of balancing equitable participation in climate science with the urgent need for reliable evidence to guide international action.
For vulnerable countries already experiencing the consequences of climate change, the outcome of the discussions in Addis Ababa could determine whether the next major scientific assessment informs global climate negotiations in 2028 or arrives after a critical opportunity to strengthen international commitments has passed.
