The IPCC is 21 years old, and experienced very important outcomes. Its latest major report, “Climate Change 2007”, clearly brought to the attention of the world the scientific understanding of the present changes in our climate and led the organization to be honored with the Nobel Peace Prize at the end of that same year.

It is in fact because of the need of broad and balanced information about climate change that the organization was created back in 1989. It was set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) as an effort by the United Nations to provide the governments of the world with a clear scientific view of what is happening to the world’s climate. The initial task for the IPCC as outlined in the UN General Assembly Resolution 43/53 of 6 December 1988 was to prepare a comprehensive review and recommendations with respect to the state of knowledge of the science of climate change; social and economic impact of climate change, possible response strategies and elements for inclusion in a possible future international convention on climate.

The scientific evidence brought up by the first IPCC Assessment Report of 1990 unveiled the importance of climate change as a topic deserving a political platform among countries to tackle its consequences. It therefore played a decisive role in leading to the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the key international treaty to reduce global warming and cope with the consequences of climate change.

Since then the IPCC has delivered on a regular basis the most comprehensive scientific reports about climate change produced worldwide, the Assessment Reports. It also continued to respond to the need of the UNFCCC for information on scientific technical matters.

The IPCC Second Assessment Report of 1995 provided key input in the way to the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. The Third Assessment Report came out in 2001, and the Fourth in the course of 2007.

Along with the Assessment Reports, the IPCC has produced several Special Reports on various topics of growing interest, and many other papers and contributions to the advancements of the climate change science. It also prepared methodologies and guidelines to be used by Parties under the UNFCCC for preparing their national greenhouse gas inventories.

The participation of the scientific community in the work of the IPCC has been growing greatly, both in terms of authors and contributors involved in the writing and the reviewing of the reports and of geographic distribution and topics covered by the reports.