Leaked documents show Australia lobbied UN to change climate report

climate change (leaked documents)
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Leaked documents viewed by BBC News show a number of countries lobbied the UN to change a crucial scientific report on how to tackle climate change.

The leaked documents reveal Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia are among countries asking the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels.

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The leak reveals countries pushing back on UN recommendations for action and comes just days before they will be asked at the summit to make significant commitments to slow down climate change and keep global warming to 1.5 degrees, BBC News reported.

The leaked documents comprise more than 32,000 submissions made by governments, companies and other stakeholders to the team of scientists compiling a UN report designed to bring together the best scientific evidence on how to tackle climate change.

These reports are produced every six to seven years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body tasked with evaluating the science of climate change.

The reports are subsequently used by governments to decide what action is needed to tackle climate change, and the latest will be a crucial input to negotiations at the COP26 conference in Glasgow.

“The authority of these reports derives in part from the fact that virtually all the governments of the world participate in the process to reach consensus,” BBS News said.

“The comments from governments the BBC has read are overwhelmingly designed to be constructive and to improve the quality of the final report.

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“The cache of comments and the latest draft of the report were released to Greenpeace UK’s team of investigative journalists, Unearthed, which passed it on to BBC News.”

Read the full report here.

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