Since its creation in 1988, the IPCC has taken increasing care to formalise its procedures. IPCC procedures define the creation and role of the IPCC Bureau, Task Forces and Working Groups, as well as the steps that must be taken by experts when preparing reports, and by administrators for overseeing the institution’s funding. Increasingly detailed over time and now running over several dozen pages, the IPCC procedures are not a boring part of IPCC studies. They are key observation points of the main issues that the IPCC has had to address over time. They reflect the compromises it has made in its efforts to give the greatest political efficiency to its reports, while ensuring that their scientific robustness remains irreproachable. The procedures therefore constitute a site from which many of the issues addressed in this book can be read. However, they should not be taken as descriptions of actual practices: their implementation is open to interpretation and thereby to debate. The drafting and amendment of procedures therefore remains an open process.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9781009082099.005