The IPCC in 2022: Three Quick Takes Around Water and Climate

I have personally been circling the edge of the world’s leading climate science institution — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC — since I began my own climate journey in 2003. Over that period, the IPCC has been a resource, an ally, and a source of inspiration. In the climate world, the IPCC conjoined political-scientific process have sometimes made it a lagging indicator or led it to hedge on or avoid important topics. The relative balance between academics and practitioners, and a longstanding hesitation around adaptation in general as well as a reluctance to talk about water as a key to unlock resilience have been consistent criticisms. I believe the last time I used an IPCC chart in a presentation or publication was in 2009. 

But the IPCC can also shine in places where there has often been little light. In 2018, I was at a UNFCCC meeting in Togo in West Africa. I made a few comments in a talk about the limitations of the IPCC around risk and adaptation to NDC focal points from more than 30 African countries. One of the focal points came to me afterwards to say, “Please be careful in how you talk about the IPCC. They are all we have had in our country to push back with decision makers who say that adaptation is not important.” His words have stayed with me, primarily as a sign of the isolation in which he must be working.

Last week, the IPCC released their primary report on climate impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation (called Assessment Report 6, Working Group 2, or AR6 WG2). AR5 WG2 came out in 2014, so the new edition was highly anticipated. Truly frightening climate impacts have happened over the past eight years, while we also have seen significant shifts in the depth and clarity of understanding about vulnerability, risk, and adaptation and resilience. Indeed, the term resilience did not even really apply to climate change in 2014, while today you could argue that our task is to give new meaning to the word when we cannot go back to where we were before.

WG2 is really a series of reports. Most people stop with the summary for policymakers, which is politically filtered by governments because it has key messages with influence. The real strengths come from the long version of the report — the real guts of the content. I know personally many of the authors as friends and colleagues, from across many chapters, but I have no formal role with the IPCC.

Given that caveat, I have three key observations about WG2 in AR6 and their relevance on both climate and water issues more broadly: 

To begin with, the IPCC notes for the first time that most climate impacts are systematically expressed through the water cycle, an observation that dates back in the water world to at least 2007. However, they go farther to say that “water-based adaptation” should be at the core of our response. While these messages have long been familiar to the AGWA community, they are refreshing to hear from the IPCC. The IPCC does not really explore what water-based adaptation (or risk assessment) can and should like look — these are also politically sensitive topics and likely fell out of the writing process, as is a description of how programs and institutions can consistently create projects that deliver water-based solutions — but the updates are welcome. 

Second, the role of nature-based solutions is also quite new for the IPCC, as is the need to manage ecosystems with a paradigm that goes beyond “baselines” and backward-looking “conservation” to place forward-looking management approaches to ecosystems at their center. Again, these topics are not new for the AGWA community, but they are important to see, even if not all of the insights are applied consistently across chapters. We can see the end of conservation as we have known it for the past century.

Lastly, I would argue that at least parts of the IPCC have embraced what has been the dominant message of the water and climate community over the past 15 years: the biggest risk from climate change is living in a world in which data from the past is less useful in understanding what happens in the future. The IPCC has embraced the “death of stationarity” (2007) and “deep uncertainty” (2012) — cornerstones of the most advanced efforts to develop new approaches to water-based risk assessment, systems analysis, and adaptation. 

I have much respect for the IPCC as an institution but it would also be a mistake to say that the IPCC’s messages match the needs of my African colleague today. Instead, he needs the institutional strength, experience, and support of his colleagues — us! — to develop systematic solutions. In fact, I have the same need in my project-level work. 

Adaptation and resilience are not scientific problems. They are challenges for how we make decisions under difficult conditions. We welcome the IPCC to this larger dialogue and partnership.

John Matthews

Corvallis, Oregon, USA