Page 42

negotiators in intensive discussions, known as the Structured Expert Dialogue, which provided parties to the UNFCCC with a detailed understanding of the report and gave them the opportunity to drill down into relevant findings by questioning the authors.The risk-framing of AR5, and the innovation of a carbon budget which showed clearly the amount of emissions for a given rise in temperature, made it possible for policymakers to reach the ambitious agreement in Paris. AR5 showed that the period from 1983 to 2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years in the Northern Hemisphere and that this global warming caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans. The Paris Agreement calls for the increase in the global average temperature to be held well below 2ºC above the pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit this rise to 1.5ºC – a level at which the IPCC showed that some key risks already occurred. Rather than setting top-down limits or reductions to emissions, the Paris Agreement aims to achieve this goal through intended nationally determined contributions, set by each individual party to the Convention, in other words by each country. COP-21 noted that the estimated aggregate greenhouse gas emissions levels in 2025 and 2030 resulting from these contributions would not fall within the least-cost scenarios that would result in a 2ºC increase and much greater reduction efforts will be required. Parties will revise their contributions every five years, and starting in 2023 will take stock of the implementation of the agreement every five years, a process known as the global stocktake, to inform the way they update and enhance their contributions. An initial review, or facilitative dialogue, will take place in 2018.Meanwhile, as countries append their formal signatures to the agreement, they are also starting to carry out the specific actions laid out in their national contributions that will deliver a slow-down and reduction in emissions.This process of review and stocktaking, to ensure that national efforts combine globally to deliver the aggregate target, and the implementation of pledges already made, provide the framework for the IPCC’s work in the coming years. At the global scale, the fact of climate change and the causes are now well established, but there is still much more to learn about the science of climate change at the regional and local scales. There are still large information gaps regarding the way the climate is changing and the impacts it is having on natural and human systems at the regional scale, especially in many developing countries. Closing these gaps will be an essential part of the IPCC’s mission to provide policy-relevant information. Adequate research on impacts by sector and region would raise awareness and lead to more informed adaptation measures and higher urgency in mitigation. That is why the IPCC is keen to enhance the involvement of scientists from developing countries in its work. Policymakers need less a statement of the problem, and more a discussion of the possible solutions – both adaptation and mitigation, which as AR5 makes clear, are complementary strategies for reducing and managing the risks of climate change.In practical terms, a greater focus on solutions in future reports is likely to mean greater involvement 042 GLOBAL VOICES