A lack of money is hampering the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a substantial funding boost is needed to ensure its scientists can complete their next set of flagship reports, the chair of the UN body has warned.
Funding from governments fell in 2024 and 2025 and the organisation could run out of money by 2028 unless it receives fresh funds or implements spending cuts, chair Jim Skea told an official meeting of IPCC scientists in Bangkok last week, according to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), which provides coverage of UN negotiations.
Skea told the IPCC’s 64th session that without a substantial increase in contributions, the completion of the next set of reports, known as AR7, would be jeopardised.
To deal with this crisis, the IPCC is now considering cutting costs by holding meetings virtually, reducing staff travel, media training, recruitment, pay and website upgrades and cutting down on the editing, translating and printing of its reports, according to scenarios prepared by the IPCC secretariat.
Nepal’s representative Manjeet Dhakal told Climate Home News he was concerned about the situation, while the ENB report said Japan’s government had called the funding crunch alarming.
While South Korea and Sweden announced increased funding, the European Union – a major funder – cautioned against assuming past contributors will continue to give the same amounts, ENB reported.
No end to row over reports’ timing
The five AR7 reports, which will assess how the climate is changing, how to adapt, how to cut emissions, a synthesis report and a special report on climate change and cities – are further threatened by a long-running disagreement over when they should be completed.
While some countries want them finished by 2028, so they can feed into the UN climate process’s five-yearly global stocktake, others say this is too rushed and want to stick to the IPCC’s usual seven-year cycle, meaning reports would be finished by 2030.
Despite not being on the initial agenda, this issue dominated much of the scientists’ time in Bangkok. With time running out as delegates flew home, the meeting was unable to agree even on a plan to reach agreement by the next meeting in October 2026, ENB said.
Delegates also failed to agree to approve reports of previous meetings, after arguing over transparency, and were divided on how to respond to a scientific conference on climate tipping points.
Funding cuts
To fund its work, the IPCC relies on voluntary funding from governments. Most of the money is spent funding the participation of scientists from developing countries, the IPCC says.
But a report prepared by the IPCC secretariat for the Bangkok meeting said that “in recent years, the IPCC’s financial situation has come under strain, including amid current geopolitical challenges”.
It did not mention any governments, but reduced US funding has had a major impact, the IPCC’s financial documents show.
During Joe Biden’s presidency, the US gave the IPCC an average of $1.7 million a year, but President Donald Trump announced he would end US support and the latest data shows the US contributed no money in the first half of 2025.
The IPCC spent more money than it received in 2024 and the shortfall grew in 2025, prompting the raft of cost-cutting proposals – from switching to online meetings to cutting budgets for translating reports.
Further cost savings could be achieved, the IPCC said, by suspending IPCC travel to outreach events, freezing non-essential updates to the IPCC’s website, not creating any new staff positions until at least 2029 and no longer providing media training for the IPCC’s scientists.
Richard Klein, a scientist who has been involved in the IPCC since 1994, told Climate Home News there was “a growing discrepancy between the ambition of the IPCC and what is feasible given the budget”.
“In the end it means more pressure on authors who are already volunteering their time, and quite possibly less inclusivity of experts from developing countries,” he said.
Nepal’s Dhakal, who advises the Least Developed Countries group, called on governments to give more money to the IPCC and for the IPCC secretariat to “explore options to reduce costs without compromising inclusivity, particularly for small delegations and those with limited capacity to engage”.
Bitter divides on timeline
Since January 2024, delegates to IPCC meetings have been arguing over when the deadline for the AR7 reports should be. Delegations including Saudi Arabia and India have opposed attempts to ensure that the reports are published by 2028, in time to inform the second global stocktake.
The issue was not included on the Bangkok meeting’s formal draft agenda, with ENB reporting that Skea said this was because he did not think delegations had shown enough flexibility to be able to resolve it.
After pressure from Saudi Arabia, India and several others, the issue was added to the agenda despite delegations complaining that their governments had not authorised them to discuss it and that many countries were not represented at the meeting.
But, after four days, delegates were unable to even agree on a plan on how to reach agreement by the next meeting in October. Nepal’s Dhakal said he was “concerned with the lack of agreement on delivering the full AR7 package by 2028 to inform the second global stocktake”.
France’s Environment Ministry said in a statement that it had “deep concern at attempts to slow down and arbitrarily delay the publication schedule for the reports”.
Klein said that, while scientists are continuing their work on these reports, the likelihood of them being finalised before the second global stocktake “diminishes with every delay in making a decision”.
Transparency and tipping points
Delegates were also divided on the usually-routine issue of approving the summaries, prepared by the IPCC secretariat, of previous meetings.
According to ENB, France, Germany and Belgium wanted reports to specify speakers’ names. While France said reports should include everything that has been said by all delegates, Saudi Arabia responded that this would be unacceptable. The issue was deferred to the next meeting in October.
Saudi Arabia and India also objected to a reference in a report to a workshop that took place at Paris’s Sorbonne University in November on “tipping points and their consequences”. They argued that the concept of tipping points, which are thresholds beyond which the Earth’s climate changes suddenly, was contentious at the IPCC, ENB reported.
While journalists are not allowed to observe IPCC sessions, staff from ENB – which is an arm of the IISD think tank – are allowed to watch sessions and report on what is said.
