Britain and the intergovernmental panel on climate change: promoting research or managing change? Available to Purchase

The important role played by the UK in the negotiation of the Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992 can be explained by the support given to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and especially to its working group on scientific assessment. Outlines the context in which this support became possible and the role and functioning of the Panel. Argues that a mature national research lobby assured that the international scientific advisory process was incorporated into both domestic environmental policy and environmental diplomacy. By ensuring that scientific assessment was indeed considered to be policy relevant by policy‐makers, attention and resources were attracted to a research area of global significance. Policy relevance was claimed on the basis of the argument that predictions of future climates and their impacts on eco‐systems, now including potential health risks to the population, are essential precautionary reasons. Suggests that this assertion needs debate. By supporting global research which is primarily concerned with predicting the behaviour of systems that include human beings as a biological species, more fundamental questions about the capacity of political systems and societies to respond to and cope with the asserted environmental threats are not addressed. If political inability to act leads mainly to support for more research, how should the research enterprise react?