Micro-Climate Blog: Fighting for Global Equity with the IPCC
By Marcy Rockman, Lifting Rocks Climate and Heritage Consulting, for the SHA Climate Heritage Initiative
More here on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with attention to equity and potential impacts on representation of cultural heritage in IPCC reports.
The 2015 Paris Agreement calls on its party countries to periodically assess progress they are making toward its goals (reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to under 2℃), a process known as the Global Stocktake. The first was held last year, 2023, and under the Paris Agreement they are to be held every 5 years after that, placing the next one in 2028. In turn, the IPCC prepares its major reports on a seven year cycle. Its most recent one, the 6th Assessment Report, also was released last year (2023). Keeping to this cycle, the 7th Assessment Report would be published in 2030. However, with the next Stocktake set for 2028 and wide recognition of 2030 as a target year for reducing emissions, there has been a call for the IPCC to accelerate its schedule and complete its next assessment report by 2028.
Here’s the problem: IPCC assessment reports are massive undertakings, drawing volunteer labor from hundreds of scientists around the world. Scientists in the Global South, who tend to have less institutional support than those in the North, are pushing back, noting that an accelerated schedule would increase the stresses on their contributions.
For heritage, this 2022 analysis of the global distribution of climate-heritage research shows that while research on connections of climate change and heritage remains sparse worldwide, it is particularly lacking in attention to the countries and heritage of the Global South. This raises concerns (mine, at least), that – if not otherwise addressed – an accelerated IPCC timeframe would further limit capacity of scholars in the Global South to gather, share, and incorporate new research on climate-heritage from across that region.
For a listing of all blog posts in this series, visit our Climate Heritage Initiative page.
Photo credit: Global distribution of UNESCO World Heritage Sites per country, Fig. 1b from Simpson, N.P., Clarke, J., Orr, S.A. et al. Decolonizing climate change–heritage research. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 210–213 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01279-8
