IPCC chair election: how the views of the candidates compare

On 5 October, governments from around the world will vote for the next chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Over recent months, Carbon Brief has been interviewing the candidates on their vision for the IPCC. We have interviewed five to date, with a sixth candidate emerging in the past few days. We’ve now created a grid of their responses so you can compare where they stand on issues such as the scope of the next assessment report, linkages between working groups, and how the IPCC should communicate its findings.

The candidates

The IPCC is an international organisation created to evaluate and synthesise climate change science. It was founded in 1988 by the United Nations (UN) as a project of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

The winner of Tuesday’s election will become the fourth person to lead the IPCC, following Bert Bolin, Bob Watson and the outgoing chair, Rajendra Pachauri. Pachauri himself was elected in 2002 and then re-elected unopposed in 2008. He stepped down in February and vice-chair Ismail El Gizouli has been the acting chair.

There are currently six candidates, though last-minute candidates may be nominated before the vote goes ahead next week – even from the floor during the meeting itself:

• Ogunlade Davidson (nominated by Sierra Leone)
• Chris Field (nominated by the US)
• Hoesung Lee (nominated by Republic of Korea)
• Nebojsa Nakicenovic (nominated by Austria and Montenegro)
• Thomas Stocker (nominated by Switzerland)
• Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (nominated by Belgium)

Carbon Brief has interviewed five of the candidates, quizzing them on climate science and the key issues for the future of the IPCC. Ogunlade Davidson was only nominated last week, so we haven’t yet been able to interview him as well.

We’’ve created a grid of responses from the five candidates – in the order in which we interviewed them:

The vote

Each member state of the IPCC has one vote. For the election to be valid, representatives from at least 98 of the 195 states must be physically present to cast their vote.

One candidate must have at least 50% of the votes to win. If they don’t have a majority, the two candidates with the most votes go through to a second ballot. In the unlikely event that they get exactly the same number of votes, member states are asked to vote for a third time. If the candidates are still equal after the third ballot, the winner will be elected by drawing lots.

The interviews

You can read our interviews in full by following the links to each candidate, but we’ve provided a video snippet from each one below.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (8 April 2015)

Thomas Stocker (28 May 2015)

Chris Field (10 July 2015)

Hoesung Lee (13 September 2015)

Nebojsa Nakicenovic (21 September 2015)

Image: IPCC meeting, Stockholm, 2013. Credit: Naturvårdsverket/Flickr.