Environmental problems are now compounding reaching the 11th hour. What can be done about the problems affecting everyone? Like what the case study illustrates about global warming influencing economic decisions worldwide and studying its effects as variables and bases of creating or revising policies.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the top international firm for the assessment of climate change. It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts.
In the same year, the UN General Assembly endorsed the action by WMO and UNEP in jointly establishing the IPCC.
The IPCC reviews and evaluates the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters.
As an intergovernmental body, membership of the IPCC is open to all member countries of the United Nations (UN) and WMO. Currently 195 countries are Members of the IPCC. Governments participate in the review process and the plenary Sessions, where main decisions about the IPCC work programme are taken and reports are accepted, adopted and approved. The IPCC Bureau Members, including the Chair, are also elected during the plenary Sessions.
Martin Rees, International Council of Academies (IAC) board member and president of the Royal Society stated that climate science is inherently complex integrating many different disciplines and kinds of data.
Therefore, he concluded that IPCC’s role in assessing and expounding the latest scientific findings is getting ever more important. Realizing this role, selection of diverse qualified authors to make quality and accurate findings as bases for policy making across all sectors like how Castles and Henderson describe the problem of IPCC’s weaknesses on economic and statistical expertise saying that the horde of authorities is drawn from a narrow professional milieu. The author team for each chapter is intended to have a range of views, expertise, and geographical representation to resolve this kind of issues (IAP, 2010). This would make diversity work on the advantage of getting credibility on equity in assessment reports. Allowing authors from developing countries to participate with high qualifications to make valid contributions for wide range scientific findings.
It also a recommendation from IAP to make the recruitment and elections transparent with formal criteria administering the two selection procedures and project reliable panel in releasing climate scientific reports.
It is assumed by the author that the best way of measuring the relevant variables is studying the what cause the problems of providing the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts.
Everybody can approach the problems of conflicts of interest among different countries by being united instead of pointing finger at any country that is the biggest contributor to global warming so we need to make a collective action to implement an effective, efficient and equitable response on the scale that is required (Review, 2006).
Identifying actions to solve climate change related problems would require scientific references. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is one of the top International body that assesses causes and impacts of climate change. It is significant that they make scientific reports consistently accurate and reliable because many sectors depend on their findings. There are many concerns need to be sought addressing to realize their mission and vision as a climate change assessing organization. Since they aim to reflect a range of views and expertise, their human resource should be expected of excellent qualifications and representing all countries. In doing the process of recruiting and electing scientists, they should be transparent to avoid anomalies of politics and biases.
In order to create and implement effective policies, there should be reliable references that would support them to benefit the world at large.
The criticism happened when it has been seen that Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change is lacking of progress report leading to assumptions of bias, bad faith, peddling “deplorable misinformation” and neglecting the proper procedure.
Lacking of accuracy and equity on reports that is critical in providing clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts in the world.
The following are the feasible goals in addressing the assumptions on lacking of accuracy and equity on reports of IPPC about Global Warming:
Proving their accuracy and equity on their reports by being transparent and following the proper process can significantly influence policy makers to create better and more policies that are crucially helpful in achieving short term and long term goals for the benefit of the world at large in solving the problems of climate change. Not proving their accuracy and equity on their reports by allowing biases, elite range of views, conflict of interest and gaps in the group reviews then its credibility would be compromised and the reports taken may have societal environmental and economic setbacks that would entail legal responsibilities.
Here is the following list of alternative courses of action IPCC can take to the challenges it faces:
IPCC Bureau would publish approved formal criteria for recruitment of authors on their website and newspapers including a range panel representation giving opportunities for developing countries to participate actively for equitable and global direction in reviews and decisions on climate change. It is a recommendation from InterAcademy Council(2010) IPCC should develop and adopt formal qualifications and formally articulate the roles and responsibilities for all Bureau members, including the IPCC Chair, to ensure that they have both the highest scholarly qualifications and proven leadership skills.
Since IPCC faces acute issues of accountability and transparency, given the broad public policy interests associated with climate change should adhere to wider scope of interests being charged of new expectations as a governance revolution (InterAcademy Council, 2010).
IPCC is being challenged by criticisms of their work on the panel’s forecasts of greenhouse gas emissions by Ian Castles, a former head of Australia’s Bureau of Statistics and David Henderson, formerly the chief economist of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development concluding that the method employed had given an upward bias to the projection. The opposition should be taken as converted resources that IPCC can possibly account. They may conduct an open discussion and formulate rubrics to validate recommendations from outside entities. If proven legitimate, it is necessary then to consider them as contributors.
The IPCC procedures call for an ‘open and transparent’ process. The precedent was set with AR4 to release all drafts, reviewer comments and responses. Also, UK and European Freedom of Information laws have been deemed to cover expert correspondence related to production of the IPCC report. Since it is now clear that the material constitutes a public record, the only remaining task is to ensure the process is timely and effective. All persons engaged in the writing, reviewing and production of the IPCC Assessment Reports shall be issued email accounts on a dedicated IPCC domain and shall conduct all correspondence related to the Assessment process via this account. The email correspondence will constitute a part of the public record. All drafts, review comments, author responses and IPCC email correspondence will then be published no more than 3 months after the release of the full report(McKitrick, 2011).
According to InterAcademy Council (2010) no matter how well-constructed IPCC’s assessment practices may be, the quality of the result depends on the quality of the leaders at all levels who guide the assessment process. Therefore, it is significantly crucial to create a transparent selection of heterogeneous qualified leaders and authors in addressing this priority affecting other thread of issues.
David Criggs assumes as well how important step is the selection of lead authors is in the process(April, 2014). Hoesung Lee, the IPCC’s new chair, has announced that it is his objective to better incorporate experts from developing countries and expertise from business and industry ( HYPERLINK ” l “b0120” Schiermeier and Tollefson, 2015). He aims to incorporate a stronger focus on solutions, providing more justification for the incorporation of practitioners relative to academics(Climate Services, 2017). In addition to this, IAC(2010) reported that some scientists expressed frustration of not being nominated despite their scientific qualifications and willingness to participate. This situation is more applicable among developing-countries scientists who felt that some of their Government Focal Points do not always nominate the best scientists from among those who volunteer, either because they do not know who these scientists are or because political considerations are given more weight than scientific qualifications. As a result, the pool of developing-country nominees may not reflect the total available capacity within these regions.
Managing diversity in IPCC can maximize potential advantages in a way that the decisions would come from a wider perspective. Thus enabling the organization to be adept in addressing emerging issues like how they are being questioned on their credibility of providing facts on climate change. This solution of putting diversity initiatives to keep human resources advantage of IPCC would also allow reduction in skill shortages for instance now there is an assumption of having political biases of not recruiting competent scientists from developing countries therefore the published report is apparently controverted.
Several studies proven the significance of well managed diversity in the success of attaining the goals of any organization like what Priscilla Dike(2013) found out from the results of her thesis. The result shows that workplace diversity plays an effective role in some companies. However inadequate mentoring and guidance could cause a company low productivity. For this reason, there must be regular improvement in ways to effectively manage a diverse workforce as the world keeps advancing. In Harvard Business Review (2016), David Rock and Heidi Grant wrote, “Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter” and enumerating a bulk of studies proving what the title implies. A 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies found that those in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean, and those in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15% more likely to have returns above the industry mean. In another study, published in Economic Geography, the authors concluded that increased cultural diversity is a boon to innovativeness. They pooled data on 7,615 firms that participated in the London Annual Business Survey, a questionnaire conducted with the UK capital’s executives that asks a number of questions about their companies’ performance. The results revealed that businesses run by culturally diverse leadership teams were more likely to develop new products than those with homogenous leadership.
The company of the writer of this case study is situated in a foreign land wherein there are many foreigners working. However, some of these foreigners are not profiled appropriately and identify what their competencies are and so they are in a way wasting human resources. Although the company sees the foreign employees as assets and they deliver accordingly but they are maximized if they are recognized in their full potentials to the company’s more revenues.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate was established for the aim of assessing the scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change. Thus inform international policy and decisions on climate-related issues. However, IPCC is under high media and public scrutiny, in particular since a few factual errors and inaccuracies.
These issues have correlation with the quality of scientists doing the assessment reports. As stated by InterAcademy Council that was asked by IPCC and United Nations to review the processes and procedures of the IPCC that the selection of authors is one of the most important decisions in the assessment process because credibility of the assessment depends largely on the participation of respected scientists (IAC, 2010). IPCC should give value on selecting qualified heterogeneous scientists representing all countries to have wide range of views and making more accurate reports for policy making reference of different sectors.
IPCC should revise their criteria in recruiting their scientists allowing to expand the pool of well-qualified authors from all countries. IAC further assumed that the absence of a transparent author-selection process or well-defined criteria for author selection can raise questions of bias and undermine the confidence of scientists and others in the credibility of the assessment.
IAC also found out that IPCC has no formal process or criteria for selecting authors which should be considered salient in providing credible findings in consideration of scientific expertise and excellence, geography, gender, age, viewpoint, and the ability to work in teams.
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form