IPCC Suspends Plenary in Addis Ababa, Leaving AR7 Timetable and Budget Unresolved

Jim Skea, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suspended the body’s 65th plenary session in Addis Ababa on Friday before delegates finished their work, leaving decisions on the timetable for the next major climate assessment and the panel’s budget unresolved.

The meeting had been scheduled for Oct. 12-16 in Ethiopia’s capital. In an official statement, the IPCC said: “The IPCC Chair, Jim Skea, suspended tonight the 65th Plenary Session in Addis Ababa after the meeting ran over its planned duration and many delegations from least developed countries and Small Island Developing States had to leave.” The statement added: “The Chair’s decision safeguards and upholds the inclusivity of IPCC plenaries where the Panel makes major decisions by consensus.”

The suspension leaves two central agenda items unfinished. As the IPCC put it: “Key agenda items of this plenary - the timelines for the three Working Group contributions to the Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) and the IPCC budget - remain open and under discussion.” The panel said the 65th plenary and its deliberations on those pending issues would resume “at the earliest opportunity.”

Independent reporting from the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and widely followed by climate negotiators, said the move came after “the departure of many Panel members from developing countries.” That account aligns with the IPCC’s explanation that delegations from least developed countries and Small Island Developing States had already begun leaving as the session stretched beyond its planned end.

The procedural problem matters because the IPCC, the U.N.-backed climate science body, works through a consensus system among its 195 member governments. Major decisions are taken in plenary meetings, where governments approve key elements of the panel’s work. In that structure, the departure of lower-resourced delegations is not just a logistical issue; it directly affects whether decisions can credibly be taken on an inclusive basis.

The unresolved timetable for AR7, the IPCC’s seventh full assessment cycle, is especially significant because governments and observers have wanted its main outputs in time to inform the U.N. climate process’s second Global Stocktake, due to conclude in November 2028. The stocktake is the formal process used under the Paris Agreement to assess collective progress on limiting global warming and adapting to climate impacts.

Reporting from multiple outlets said the dispute in Addis Ababa centered in part on whether the assessment could be completed quickly enough to meet that 2028 window. Others argued that a longer schedule was needed to allow fuller participation by less-resourced governments and scientists, reflecting capacity constraints that often shape who can stay in long negotiations and contribute to technically demanding assessment work.

For now, the immediate consequence is narrower but important: the IPCC has paused without settling when its three AR7 Working Group reports will be delivered or agreeing on its budget for the coming period. Climate Action Network, a coalition of environmental groups, called the outcome a setback, saying, “CAN is deeply disappointed by this outcome.”