For the first time in 35 years, two women among nominees to head key UN climate change panel

Amid scorching heatwaves from Europe to China and the United States, governments will this week pick a new leader for the UN’s flagship science panel on climate change – with pressure to name a woman for the first time in its 35-year history.

The new chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , or IPCC, set up in 1988, will oversee mammoth reports in the next few years by hundreds of scientists, meant to guide a shift from fossil fuels to limit worsening global warming.

June was the hottest month on record around the world, and swathes of southern Europe, the United States and China have been hit by sweltering weather, wildfires, droughts and floods.

The IPCC, which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for its work, began its meet in Nairobi from July 25-28 to choose a chair from four eminent scientists – two women and two men, all aged over 60 – who will be tasked with leading the studies, likely to be published in the late 2020s.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the last series of IPCC reports – published in 2021-’23 under the chairmanship of South Korea’s Hoesung Lee, and thousands of pages long – as “code red” for the planet.

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