UN report on 1.5C blocked from climate talks after Saudi Arabia disputes science

(Climate Change News, 27 Jun 2019) There will be no further formal discussions of the IPCC’s findings at the UN after Saudi Arabia fought to undermine the findings of the global scientific community.

A major report on 1.5C has been excluded from formal UN climate negotiations, after Saudi Arabia tried to discredit its scientific underpinnings.

Discussions came to a deadlock at the talks in Bonn after a small group of countries refused to engage in substantive discussions over how the report’s findings could be used to inform policies on increasing the pace and scale of decarbonisation.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lays out the differences between 1.5C and 2C of warming – a matter of survival for many vulnerable countries including small island states which pushed for the findings to lead to more ambitious carbon-cutting policies.

Endalew said that although excluding the report from formal negotiations was “a mistake” it was a better outcome to “go without anything rather than having a shopping list of issues”.

Instead, he called on Chile, which is taking on the talks’ presidency, to organise events so that discussions can continue informally.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was commissioned by the UN on behalf of all countries, including those now objecting to its methodology.

External link

Climate Change News, 27 Jun 2019: UN report on 1.5C blocked from climate talks after Saudi Arabia disputes science