2
Climate science and impact At the outset, let us briefly addressing the state of our knowledge of climate science and providing an overview of the key impacts of climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an unprecedented and ambitious scientific collaboration, has played a major role in informing our understanding of this issue. The IPCC was established by the UN Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization, in 1988. Scientists involved in the IPCC volunteer their time to synthesise the latest peer-reviewed research on climate science, climate change impacts and climate change mitigation (which involves actions to limit the amount or rate of global warming and its related effects). In 2007, the IPCC and the United States’ Vice President Al Gore were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, ‘for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change’.9 Our current understanding of climate change is captured in the IPCC’s comprehensive Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), which was completed in 2014.10 An updated Sixth Assessment Report is currently being finalised. In 2018, the IPCC published the influential Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC, which emphasised that the next ten years would be a decade of consequence for climate action.11 In 2018, the IPCC published the influential Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC, which emphasised that the next ten years would be a decade of consequence for climate action.
11
