Greenpeace activists protest with giant banners (R) at the opening conference of the 27th Plenary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Valencia Nov. 12, 2007. A panel of UN climate change scientists and national delegations agreed on a guide for policymakers Friday, warning of the rising risk of global warming affecting the planet. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

 

A panel of UN climate change scientists and national delegations agreed on a guide for policymakers Friday, warning of the rising risk of global warming affecting the planet.

 

Delegates of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from more than 140 countries met this week in Valencia, eastern Spain.

 

The five-day meeting concluded early Friday with the approval of a 20-page summary of countless data pages and computer projections, compiled since 2001 by the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize-winning IPCC.

 

The summary report provides a common scientific baseline for future political talk on climate change, as it was adopted by consensus, meaning that all participating governments accept it and cannot disavow its conclusions.

 

The document, which summarizes the scientific consensus on climate change caused by human beings, will be distributed to delegates at a crucial meeting in Indonesia next month that is intended to launch a political process on international cooperation to control global warming.

 

The report describes how climate systems are changing and why, the impact this is having on mankind and ecosystems, and many of its possible future impacts if due action is not taken to slow the trend.

 

The summary and a longer "synthesis report" of about 70 pages, which are expected to be formally adopted after proofreading, will be released Saturday at a news conference attended by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

 

The forthcoming climate change meeting in the Indonesian resort of Bali, starting on Dec. 3, will focus on the next step in combating climate change after the measures adopted in the Kyoto Protocol expire in five years.

 

The Kyoto Protocol obliges 36 industrial countries to radically reduce their carbon emissions by 2012, but it has no clear plan for what happens after that date.

 

At the meeting in Bali, the summary will be put before environment ministers, who are likely to agree a two-year strategy to negotiate a successor to the protocol.

 

But a final agreement on the synthesis report, as it is known, is dependent on approval of a much longer underlying scientific report which is still being considered.

 

The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization to give governments scientific advice about climate change.

 

(Xinhua News Agency November 17, 2007)