10 November 2025, video address
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Your Excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues and friends, ladies and gentlemen,
On behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the IPCC – I would like to thank you for the invitation to address the opening of the Earth Information Day at COP30.
Although I am not with you in person, I would like to take this opportunity to inform you about the status of our seventh assessment cycle and our work assessing the latest science related to climate change.
Following the Panel’s 63rd Plenary Session two weeks ago in Lima, the scientific content of all six reports for this cycle has been agreed. These include the three Working Group contributions to the Seventh Assessment Report, respectively covering physical science, adaptation and mitigation; the 2027 Special Report on Cities and Climate Change; the 2027 Methodology Report on Short-lived Climate Forcers; and the 2027 Methodology Report on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage. The critical knowledge gaps that these reports will address have been identified.
The reports are in different stages of production:
- more than 660 authors for the three Working Group reports will be gathering for the first-ever joint Lead Author meeting in the first week of December;
- the First Order Draft of the 2027 Special Report on Climate Change and Cities is now under Expert Review, which will conclude by mid-December;
- the 2027 Methodology Report on Short-lived Climate Forcers concluded its second Lead Author Meeting four weeks ago;
- and the 2027 Methodology Report on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage will now be seeking nominations for authors.
Since the start of the current cycle two years ago, significant progress has been made in expanding access to scientific literature for authors from developing countries, in securing support for Chapter Scientists from developing countries, and successfully delivering an Expert Meeting on Gender, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity. These efforts confirm our commitment to inclusivity, diversity and equity across IPCC.
At this stage of the cycle, we can now bridge between the knowledge base established in the past cycle with the key questions and prospective scientific findings of the current one. And of course, observational data is foundational for IPCC’s work, including in the context of overshoot of 1.5 degrees warming.
Now to illustrate all this, allow me to expand on three topics: attribution, adaptation, and sustainable development and equity.
So regarding attribution, the Synthesis Report of the Sixth Assessment Report clearly states that “human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming”.
There is high confidence that some impacts, such as observable increases in hot extremes, can be attributed to human activities. Human activities are likely the principal driver of intensifying heavy precipitation. Yet there is lower confidence regarding human influence on agricultural and ecological drought. The Seventh Assessment Report will address these lower-confidence topics with a view, if its supported by the evidence, to reaching robust conclusions.
We will be addressing the attribution of specific weather events to global climate change. The Working Group I report will extend the attribution of large-scale changes in the global and regional climate systems to the attribution of local-level changes and extremes. Working Group II will extend the assessment of attribution to observed and projected impacts.
We are going to place greater emphasis on adaptation in the current cycle, while not, of course, neglecting mitigation. Adaptation has lacked the means to measure progress. It simply isn’t easy to separate adaptation investment from wider infrastructure investment and patterns of development. Working Group II will address that by revising and updating the 1994 Technical Guidelines on assessing impacts and adaptation, including indicators, metrics and methodologies. The Working Group II report will, for the first time, include a chapter on finance, an indispensable precondition for successful adaptation.
Regarding sustainable development, the IPCC will pay closer attention to the role of climate action, including progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Regional and thematic chapters of the Working Group II report will address distributional aspects, including human rights, equity and justice, and impacts on vulnerable groups. The report also includes a chapter focused on responses to losses and damages, which are disproportionately experienced by vulnerable communities and groups.
An entire chapter of the Working Group III report is dedicated to sustainable development and mitigation, covering the distributional consequences of mitigation actions, synergies and trade-offs with sustainable development, and implications for biodiversity and ecosystems, conservation, and restoration.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The broader scientific community is already hard at work on these topics and others. Our unique role is to assess and synthesise the vast and exponentially growing body of knowledge on climate change, its impacts, and available response options. During testing times, and facing complex challenges, IPCC will continue to reach for consensus on a shared and trusted evidence base. This is essential for underpinning effective action on the truly global challenge of climate change.
Thank you.