The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) won the Nobel Peace Prize, jointly with former United States Vice-President Al Gore, on 12 October 2007. By awarding the 2007 prize to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said it wanted to contribute to “a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate” and “to reduce the threat to the security of mankind.” The Committee also noted that the IPCC reports “created an ever-broader, informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming.”

The Fourth Assessment Report, titled Climate Change 2007, will be released on 17 November 2007, following the previous three Reports completed in 1990, 1995 and 2001. The Fourth Report, explicitly targeting policymakers, includes findings from over 450 lead authors, 800 contributors and 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries and sums up the last six years of research. Released earlier this year by the three IPCC Working Groups, three reports on the scientific evidence of global warming, impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, and mitigation of climate change provide a comprehensive assessment of the current state of knowledge on climate change and contribute to the final part of the Fourth Report.

“This is an honour that goes to all the scientists and authors who have contributed to the work of the IPCC, which alone has resulted in enormous prestige for this organization and the remarkable effectiveness of the message that it contains”, said IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri, who said he was overwhelmed by the award.  “The IPCC’s strength lies in the processes and procedures that it follows”, Mr. Pachauri noted. “Most important is its ability of carrying out rigorous scientific assessment, which undergoes the scrutiny of government representatives and therefore is accepted by Governments,” he said, adding that no other body in the world is able to meet these twin objectives simultaneously.

 The IPCC was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to recognize the problem of the increasing global warming. With its three working groups and a task force, it continues to provide scientific, technical and socio-economic advice to the world community, in particular to the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has made climate change one of his top priorities, congratulated the Panel, stressing that thanks to the IPCC’s “lucid and well-documented findings, it is now established beyond doubt that climate change is happening, and that much of it is caused by human activity”. Mr. Ban also paid tribute to Mr. Gore, who in recent years has been campaigning for urgent action on climate change and whose presentation was featured in the Oscar-winning documentary film An Inconvenient Truth. He said that Mr. Gore’s “exceptional commitment and conviction” is an example of “the crucial role that individuals and civil society can play in encouraging multilateral responses” to climate change. Mr. Ban called for industrialized and developing countries alike to commit to a real breakthrough at the UN Climate Change Conference, to be held from 3 to 14 December 2007 in Bali, Indonesia.

Praising the decision of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the Executive Director of UNEP, Achim Steiner, said that the Committee had made it clear that “combating climate change is a central peace and security policy for the twenty-first century”. He also emphasized the importance of negotiations during the Bali meeting on a post-2012 emissions reduction agreement.  

With the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, the IPCC joins the following UN officials and bodies as Nobel laureates: UN mediator Ralph Bunche in 1950; the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1954 and again in 1981; UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961; the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 1965;  the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1969; the UN Peacekeeping Forces in 1988; the United Nations and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2001; and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2005.