Scientists to review climate panel after errors, UN says

Feb 26, 2010, 15:34 GMT

   Bali Island, Indonesia - The United Nations plans to appoint independent scientists to review the world's top panel on climate change in the wake of criticism over a series of errors found in the body's key report, a UN official said Friday.

   United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner asserted that governments had full confidence in the importance of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) but believed that its response to the errors should be transparent and precise.

   Ministers and officials attending a UN environment meeting on the Indonesian resort island of Bali raised the issue when panel chair Rajendra Pachauri addressed the forum, a statement at the end of the meeting said.

   'Errors can happen,' Steiner said. 'It's human to make mistakes, but the world cannot afford to lose confidence in the integrity and credibility of the IPCC process.'

   The panel came under fire after it was revealed one of its 2007 reports wrongly included a prediction that Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035 when it should have been 2350.

   That error and several other flaws have emboldened climate change skeptics and prompted calls for Pachauri's resignation.

   '[The ministers'] clear message was that the IPCC must act immediately to create transparency to ensure that confidence is restored and strengthened, and it needs to do so by having a review in one form or another that is both independent and credible,' Steiner said.

   Details of the review and its scope would be announced next week, the statement said.

   Separately, top UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said the conference on climate change scheduled for December in Mexico represents a 'huge opportunity' for a stronger global agreement.

   'While Copenhagen focused very much on very big political issues, there's a huge opportunity in Mexico to actually put the operational framework in place that at the end of the day will make a difference,' said de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

   Under a non-binding agreement reached at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen late last year, countries agreed in principle on some of the steps to be taken toward tackling climate change, but the Copenhagen Accord has been criticized for lacking a legal framework and concrete objectives.

   De Boer, who announced on February 18 that he would resign as the UN's top climate official in July, was in Bali for an informal ministerial meeting on climate change, held on the sidelines of a United Nations environmental conference.

   When asked if the Mexico meeting could produce a legally binding treaty, de Boer said that term meant different things to different countries.

   'I think it's important that in Mexico we focus on the implementation architecture and then decide what legal character that architecture should be given,' he said.

   A UN Environment Programme report released this week said countries need to set tougher targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions if the world is to keep the global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

   Scientists said temperatures must not exceed this increase if a climate catastrophe is to be averted.

   De Boer said it was important that developed countries start to act on their pledges of 30 billion dollars in short-term financing to help poor countries deal with the effects of climate change.

   'Many countries are already confronted with the impacts of climate change, and they need to assess their vulnerability and begin to respond to those impacts,' he said.

   The European Union was looking at ways to release funds quickly, de Boer said, adding that a new international bureaucracy was not needed for such a scheme.

   Greater transparency in the process would also help improve the trust between the developed world and poorer countries, who should be more included in the negotations, the Dutch diplomat said.

   'Many developing countries feel they are being called upon to do something without it being clear that they will have the resources or the instruments to be able to,' he said.

   To restore their confidence in the process, a clear framework for how the technological and financial support is to be provided to poorer countries is 'critical', he added.

   Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said delegates at the ministerial meeting agreed there was an urgent need to make progress in the negotiations, warning that climate change represented 'an existential challenge,' especially for small island states.

   'While the initial sentiment was almost one of doom and gloom, two months after Copenhagen, things are not as gloomy as they look,' Natalegawa said.