Under a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, the IPCC will soon be bankrupt

The UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, is in the midst of an unprecedented crisis. The Dutch media were full of it last week. “Complete chaos at UN climate panel: no agreement, no budget and no report?”, headlined the NOS. “Talks at authoritative climate panel IPCC have completely stalled”, reported RTL Nieuws.

The Panel met in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) for its annual meeting, where, amongst other things, agreements were to be reached on the publication date of the next IPCC report (the seventh; the sixth was published in 2021) and on funding. Things went wrong on both counts. The current chair of the IPCC, Jim Skea, decided on Friday evening to suspend the meeting because participants from the least developed countries and small island states, in particular, needed to catch their flights home. Continuing would have been at the expense of the “inclusivity” of the process, according to the IPCC.

At first glance, these seem like trivial matters. Countries in favour of ambitious climate policy want the report to be ready in time for a major political climate conference in 2028. There, progress on the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement will be discussed. Some countries (including Saudi Arabia, Russia, India and China) want a postponement until 2029, arguing that developing countries need more time to participate. For the time being, those countries have ‘won’. In the words of the NOS: “The fact that IPCC Chair Jim Skea has now adjourned the meeting without an agreement on that timeline or the budgets, is seen as a victory for a number of countries with fossil fuel interests, who want to delay the report until after the 2028 climate summit.”

No flight tickets or hotels

But as always, money also plays a part. President Trump has withdrawn the US entirely from the IPCC. And it just so happens that the US has been by far the IPCC’s most important source of funding. America accounted for over a quarter of the IPCC’s budget. Many people, including those critical of the IPCC, believe that this involves large sums of money. Nothing could be further from the truth. The big money is not involved in the IPCC – the body that publishes the scientific assessments – but in climate policy itself, a process that falls under the remit of another UN entity, the UNFCCC.

The IPCC’s budget is negligible. In 2024, the budget amounted to just over 5 million euros, of which nearly 2 million came from the US. Contributions to the IPCC are voluntary. Eighty percent of the 195 countries affiliated with the IPCC have never contributed a single cent. Dutchman Bart van den Hurk of Deltares is currently co-chair of the Working Group 2 report (which examines the impact of climate change). Two hundred and thirty scientists from 91 countries are contributing to that report. In the RTL Nieuws article, he explains why funding remains important even now. “[…] now that no budget has been set, there is no money for flight tickets and hotels for travellers from developing countries.”

The IPCC is keen to be ‘inclusive’, and for scientists from developing countries, the IPCC meetings offer a chance to travel abroad at all. With the withdrawal of US support, that opportunity is now being denied them. That is the source of the frustration. It is telling that other countries are unwilling to fill a gap of just two million euros a year. That is apparently how important the IPCC is.

The Netherlands did not contribute any funds to the IPCC in 2024 and 2025, probably because Deltares is home to the so-called Technical Support Unit (TSU). The Rijksuitgaven.nl website shows a substantial additional contribution to Deltares in 2023, which is presumably intended for setting up this TSU.

Business-as-usual scenario

Earlier this year, we reported on Indepen that, after years of criticism, the IPCC had finally abandoned an extremely doomsday scenario, which was based on absurd assumptions about future coal use and led to extreme global warming by 2100. Now, a doomsday scenario hangs over the IPCC itself. In a article published in March this year, the IPCC sets out various scenarios for its financial future. Let us, entirely in keeping with the IPCC’s tradition, highlight the bleakest scenario.