EU says some countries are trying to undermine the IPCC as a fight over the next climate science report spills into COP31

A dispute over when the world’s top climate science body should publish its next major report has reached the COP31 summit in Antalya, with the European Union accusing some countries of trying to undermine the IPCC because they do not want to act on climate change.

Diana Acconcia, a senior EU climate official at the talks, said on Friday, November 13, that the bloc will “fight” for the outcome it wants and called the debate “polarised”. Her remarks came as the row over the seventh assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change began to weigh on negotiations that involve nearly 200 countries and run on consensus.

What the fight is about

The IPCC produces a major assessment roughly every seven years, and its working groups cover the physical science, impacts and adaptation, and ways to cut emissions. The question is timing. Dozens of countries across Europe, Africa and the Pacific want the report finished before the second global stocktake in 2028, the Paris Agreement process that reviews how far countries have got in cutting emissions. A smaller group, reported to include Saudi Arabia, China and India, wants the report delayed to 2029.

Some negotiators fear that updated findings would put a sharper number on the distance between what governments are doing and what is needed. Others, including India in earlier IPCC debates, argue that a tighter schedule risks rushing the work and leaving out literature from developing countries.

Pierre Friedlingstein, a University of Exeter scientist who has worked on IPCC reports, said policy should rest on the latest science and that certain countries prefer the status quo. UN Secretary-General António Guterres praised the IPCC’s “remarkable” work and said he wants the next report published before the next stocktake.

How the deadlock built up

The argument is not new. At the IPCC’s 61st session in Sofia, which ended on August 2, 2024, delegates were offered an accelerated schedule that would finish all three working group reports by June 2028, a proposal from the panel’s leadership that put the working group reports between May and August 2028 with the synthesis in May 2029, and a longer option. No agreement was reached and chair Jim Skea moved the decision to later meetings. Saudi Arabia, India and China had objected strongly to the accelerated timetable.

The most recent attempt failed in Addis Ababa. The IPCC’s 65th plenary met from October 12 to 16, 2026, and Skea suspended it late on October 16 with no agreed schedule and no budget, the sixth consecutive failure since 2024. Before it opened, ministers from mostly European and small-island countries wrote that the delay was pushed by “those whose entrenched interests are at odds with reducing greenhouse gases”. Skea called the timing a “critical gap” and urged governments to “spare no effort to find consensus”.

At the plenary, India said it favoured publishing the Working Group II and III reports in 2029 and objected to calling the timeline “delayed”, saying it was “more compressed than those of AR5 or AR6”. Saudi Arabia was among a group that included Russia, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Syria and Belarus that backed 2029, arguing an earlier deadline could pressure reviewers and compromise rigour and inclusivity. The Least Developed Countries group, chaired by Adao Soares Barbosa, warned of losing “the opportunity for the best available science to inform the second Global Stocktake”. Many delegates from small delegations had to leave because the meeting overran, Skea said.

What the IPCC chair says

Skea has acknowledged that the panel faces operational and reputational risks from the impasse. IPCC authors are volunteers who plan years of work around the schedule, so each failed meeting adds to the uncertainty over their deadlines. He has urged delegates to help reach a result at the panel’s December meeting.

Why it matters

The stocktake is meant to be built on the panel’s latest findings. If the seventh report arrives in 2029, the 2028 review would rest on the last cycle’s science, which was assembled before the recent run of record heat. This year’s COP31 follows a UN report last month finding that the world is on course to exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit, and a year of extreme heatwaves in Western Europe.

For India, the stakes are practical as well as diplomatic. The country has argued that developing nations must be equal partners in the science and that the literature on its own vulnerabilities is thin, while its emissions and energy choices are among the most watched in the talks. Its stand on the timetable sits beside its resistance at COP31 to firm targets on fossil fuels, a divide that observers describe as ongoing between India and the G77 on one side and the EU on the other.

What happens next

Observers are not optimistic that the row will be resolved in Antalya, though some delegations are pressing to recognise the “central role” of IPCC science in the final COP31 decision, a move that would add friction as the talks pass their midpoint. Australia, which leads the negotiations under a split presidency with Turkey, took submissions until Saturday night and plans to circulate a draft political text early next week. The IPCC itself hopes to settle the schedule at its December session. Guterres, who leaves office at the end of December, told delegates the central question is “in the hands of member states, particularly the big emitters”.

For earlier coverage of the summit, see our reports on Guterres’ speech to leaders and India’s position at the opening.