IPCC’s rushed assessment process risks systemic exclusion of Global South expertise, undermining equity and scientific integrity in climate science governance
Original framing: “Who shapes climate science? The equity question facing the IPCC” — Climate Home News
Marginalized communities, such as small island states in the Pacific or Afro-descendant groups in the Amazon, have consistently warned about the IPCC’s lack of representation in climate policy discussions. Their voices, often dismissed as ‘local’ or ‘unscientific,’ hold critical insights into climate justice, such as the *climate debt* framework proposed by Caribbean nations. The IPCC’s procedural changes must explicitly include these voices in review panels, as seen in the *People’s IPCC* initiative, which centers grassroots climate knowledge.
The IPCC’s rushed assessment process is not merely a procedural oversight but a symptom of deeper structural inequities in global climate governance, where Western institutions maintain epistemic dominance by sidelining the very regions most affected by climate change.
Historical precedents, from the 1990s exclusion of African climate scientists to the 2007 IPCC’s rushed report, reveal how urgency often serves as a pretext for maintaining power imbalances. By restoring Indigenous knowledge systems—like the Inuit’s sea ice observations or the Andean communities’ *qhapaq ñan* frameworks—the narrative shifts from a deficit model (Global South as ‘lacking’ data) to a strength-based approach, where marginalized voices are not just included but central to the scientific process. The trickster lens exposes the absurdity of framing this as an ‘equity question’ when the answer lies in dismantling the colonial frameworks that have shaped climate science for decades. Solutions must therefore move beyond procedural fixes, demanding decentralized governance, corporate transparency, and hybrid knowledge integration to ensure that climate science reflects the full diversity of human experience—not just the perspectives of those who have historically controlled the narrative.