Climate Change enters the Nobel Peace Prizes

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and UNEP to assess scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. It is currently finalizing its Fourth Assessment Report "Climate Change 2007".

Joyeeta Gupta, Professor of Law and Policy in Water Resources and Environment at UNESCO-IHE, is a relevant member of the IPCC working group in charge of assessing options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and otherwise mitigating climate change.

1. How does it feel that the programme you are so actively working for wins the Nobel Peace Prize?

The fact that IPCC shared the Nobel Prize for Peace with Al Gore came as an unexpected, but welcome, surprise to the IPCC community. Most of us have put in weekends and evenings working for IPCC, since having a chapter ready, costs almost three months of time, time that is not paid for. So it is a very time consuming process.

At the same time work for IPCC was not seen as a top scientific contribution because it is a not a peer-reviewed journal, even though it is heavily peer reviewed. The recognition of the hard work of IPCC through the Nobel Prize, as articulated by Dr. Pachauri, Chairman of IPCC, makes each scientific contributor “a Nobel Laureate”.

2. The reports published by IPCC reflecting the conclutions of the three Working Groups are very comprehensive. What are the first steps the world should take to deal with climate change before it is too late?

The IPCC reports on the urgency of the climate change problem and the need to break from past trends in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. It highlights the possible impacts of climate change and the need to prepare societies to deal with it.

Translating these messages into action calls for far reaching emission reduction targets for the developed world to be followed fairly soon by some major changes in development pathways in the developing world. Each sector will have a role to play in emission reduction and possibly in adaptation and the need to mobilize all levels of governance from community to global level to change human behaviour world wide is the key challenge for the coming years.

3. What does the Prize mean for the fight against climate change?

The prize recognises the seriousness of the problem and its implications for human security all over the world. In recognizing environmental issues and problems, it makes these more mainstream in the scientific and social world. In recognizing the role science and politics have to play in addressing this problem, since politics must be based on sound science and since science must provide the politicians the reasons for taking action, it demonstrates the symbiotic nature of these two fields.

In recognizing an entire team of authors working over the last twenty years, it recognizes that in the 21st century, environmental science is not likely to be a one person show but the results of the incremental collaborative work undertaken by researchers from different countries and disciplines together.

We are hoping that this will push governments all over the world to take serious action in Bali at the next Conference of the Parties in December 2007 so that a clear programme of action is developed to ensure that decisions for a post-Kyoto world are ready no later than in 2009.