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of authors from the social sciences, in their widest sense, in the work of the IPCC.Another implication of focusing more on solutions is that the IPCC will need to engage more with the business community. After all, it is business that will develop and implement many of the technologies or services that will make it possible to reduce emissions. The IPCC already draws some authors and many expert reviewers from the business community but there is scope to do more. And as the IPCC embarks on a new set of assessments, business can play an important role in the scoping process, which draws up the outline of those reports. At the same time, to ensure that its reports are relevant, the IPCC can benefit from engaging with business and other user groups as it scopes out its reports, to ensure that the assessments address their priorities. The IPCC held an expert meeting in February in Oslo, looking at how AR5 was communicated, to discuss how future reports could be made more accessible and relevant to all users. A paper on The Structured Expert Dialogue of the 2013-2015: Review of the UNFCCC, presented at this expert meeting addressed the issue of new science-policy interface.Work on the new products – the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) and related special reports – is now starting, following the election of a new IPCC Bureau, including Dr Hoesung Lee as the Chair of the IPCC, last October. One challenge the IPCC faces is to align its work, which in the past has produced comprehensive assessments every five-seven years, with the UNFCCC’s new five-year cycle. AR6 will be delivered in time for the first global stocktake in 2023, providing policymakers and other stakeholders with an up-to-date assessment of climate change, its impacts and possible future risks, and options for tackling it. Climate change policy decisions must ultimately be supported by society as a whole and there is a clear need to provide scientific evidence in a simple language for public to understand the issues and support decision-making. The COP-21 session in Paris, in its decision on the adoption of the Paris Agreement, explicitly invited the IPCC to provide a Special Report in 2018 on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways. IPCC initiated the discussion on the production of this Special Report at its 43rd Session held in Nairobi, Kenya, from 11 to 13 April 2016.Solving the problems posed by global climate change requires an effective science-policy interface and IPCC in its future efforts will continue to emphasize scientific knowledge and also pay attention to social science. ■ ABOUT THE AUTHORDr Mannava Sivakumar is currently the Acting Secretary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). He is also serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the Weather and Climate Extremes Journal published by Elsevier. Dr Sivakumar has over 300 publications to his credit, including 54 books and 87 articles in various international journals. Dr Sivakumar was elected as a Fellow of seven international scientific societies and received the 2007 International Service in Agronomy Award from the American Society of Agronomy and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for the Advancement of Biodiversity Sciences in 2015. Photo Credit: UN Photo-Mark Garten“ BY ENDORSING THE IPCC REPORTS, GOVERNMENTS ACKNOWLEDGE THE AUTHORITY OF THEIR SCIENTIFIC CONTENT”GLOBAL VOICES 043