Roadmap for adaptation

he report of Working Group II (wgii) to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc) on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability was approved in Brussels on April 5th 2007. To understand what that means, it is important to understand how ipcc reports are created. Work on this latest report began more than three years ago when nations that have signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change nominated scientists to serve as authors for each of the 20 chapters of the prescribed outline. These authors, more than 200 in number from all six continents, then took up the task of assessing the recent scientific literature on the impacts of climate change in their specific regions or sectors. They argued among themselves as they scoured their shelves and experience for sources of new knowledge. They hammered out language with which they could all agree. Their work appeared in four separate drafts, and each subsequent version was subjected to expert and government review from hundreds of other scientists and interested parties (including climate sceptics). In every round, they responded to thousands of comments. Review editors for each chapter made certain that each and every comment was adequately considered and a record of each and every response to each and every review comment is on file at the ipcc Secretariat. At the same time, the convening lead authors of the 20 chapters were writing the Technical Summary of the major results from the evolving chapters as well as a draft version for what is termed the Summary for Policymakers. Both of these documents went through the same multiple draft and review process and the final version was ultimately submitted to the ipcc plenary in Brussels. Because countries, and not the scientists, are ultimately responsible for the Summary for Policymakers, the final draft provided by the original authors was reworked in Brussels sentence by sentence, and sometimes word by word. And because the plenary is a consensus body, each word had to achieve unanimous approval. The point of this sometimes incredibly tedious process is not to change the science to fit political agendas. It is, instead, to make certain that the message conveyed to policymakers accurately communicates A roadmap for adaptation