Co-Chair of Working Group III (Mitigation) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Scientific Support

This award supports the scientific activities of the Co-chair of Working Group III (Mitigation) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and scientific members of the Technical Support Unit (TSU). The TSU is co-located at Imperial College London and the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA). IPCC is a world body which provides policymakers with assessments of the science of climate change, its impacts, and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC offers policymakers a snapshot of what the scientific community understands rather than promoting a particular view. IPCC sets out options from which policymakers may choose in pursuit of their goals, but it does not tell governments what to do. Assessment involves a structured approach to interpreting that knowledge and a synthesis of the scientific findings which in itself constitutes a substantial contribution to knowledge.

IPCC operates through three Working Groups (WGs). WG III is concerned with climate change mitigation, i.e. reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and removing them from the atmosphere. Prof Jim Skea was elected co-chair of WG III in October 2015 for a period of seven years along with Prof PR Shukla of IIMA. Their task is to produce the WG III contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report, to contribute to the Synthesis Report along with other WGs, to contribute to a Special Report on the implications of keeping global temperature increases below 1.5 degrees as requested by the UN Climate Convention, and to lead the production of a further special Report on climate change and aspects of land use.

Co-chairs coordinate the efforts of hundreds of volunteer authors to produce these reports and gain approval for the final reports from IPCC governments. They are backed up by a TSU comprising scientists and other support staff. For the first time, the WG III TSU is co-located at the institutions of the developed and developing country co-chairs. This award provides support for Professor Jim Skea, the UK co-chair, and members of the scientific staff located in London. A parallel award from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), includes official development assistance (ODA) and covers operations and communications costs in London and posts at IIMA.

WG III's work covers all aspects of energy, including energy supply technologies, energy demand, energy infrastructure and whole energy systems approaches. The reports also covers agriculture, forestry and land use. To meet this remit, IPCC contributors include physical scientists and engineers but also those from the biological sciences, economists and other social scientists. The scope of IPCC WG III products is wide and they are interdisciplinary in character. The Special Reports on 1.5 degrees and land use, involving collaboration across Working Groups, are exceptionally interdisciplinary.

To deliver the products, the co-chairs and the TSU must: scope and set the scientific framework for reports in consultation with governments and other stakeholders; select authors to contribute to the drafting; engage with authors to ensure that the quality of individual report chapter is assured; ensure that review comments by experts and governments are addressed to adequately; lead the drafting of the Summaries for Policymakers which are the most high-profile IPCC outputs; and steer the reports through approval sessions of IPCC involving all member governments.

IPCC's activities have a major impact on climate change policy nationally and internationally. The widely cited reports have influenced the development of the UN Climate Convention and are used to inform national policy-making. This award enables the UK and UK science to have a significant influence on climate policy nationally and internationally through the framing and direction provided by the co-chairs and through the efforts of the many UK researchers who will be mobilised to contribute to IPCC.

The work will benefit five main groups: international climate policymakers, especially those in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); energy and climate change policymakers at the national and sub-national levels; the climate research community; the public at large; and business and civil society stakeholders.

UNFCCC negotiations will benefit from the scientific underpinning provided by IPCC reports, and especially the Summaries for Policymakers (SPMs) approved by member governments. IPCC outputs will provide the scientific foundations on which negotiations can take place. They will also gain from IPCC's invited contribution to the global stocktake of "nationally determined contributions" as set by the Paris climate agreement, especially on methodological aspects. This will provide guidance on the feasibility of internationally agreed targets.

National policymakers charged with implementing climate policy will benefit from IPCC's assessment of alternative emission pathways and the cost and potential of climate change mitigation measures and its assessment of the success or otherwise of different types of policies and interventions. In addition, IPCC activities contribute to capacity-building in many developing countries by providing access to the most up-to-date knowledge on policy design. There are particular opportunities for this type of impact in India where the developing country co-chair, with strong connections to government, is located.

The climate research community will benefit from the feedback from IPCC processes regarding those scientific priorities likely to have the biggest impact on climate decision-making. For example, various scientific communities (e.g. integrated assessment modellers of climate change) and funding agencies (Natural Environment Research Council, European Commission) have adjusted their strategies in response to the urgent request to IPCC to produce a Special Report on 1.5 degrees warming and related emission pathways by 2018. In developing countries, participation in IPCC activities will enhance capacity-building efforts.

The public at large will benefit from IPCC through the state-of-the-art knowledge, subject to rigorous review processes, which it places in the public domain. IPCC and Working Group III Technical Support Unit will work with intermediaries to ensure that the public has access to material that communicates clearly while remaining faithful to the underlying science. A major objective in IPCC's revised Communications Strategy, fully supported by the WG III co-chairs, is to make IPCC reports more readable and to improve their accessibility.

Business and civil society groups will be consulted at the scoping stage of IPCC reports. This is to ensure that questions which they consider important are considered and that evidence and perspectives which they identify are taken into account. The intention is to ensure that the final reports are relevant to their needs and that messages for policymakers are based on a wide range of relevant evidence.