Guide on Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – In 1988 theWMO and the UNEP co-established the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC), an ad hoc, open-ended intergovernmentalmechanism composed of scientists from all over the world, tasked toprovide scientific assessments of climate change. It is recognized as themost authoritative scientific and technical voice on climate change, andits assessments influence the negotiators of the UNFCCC and its KyotoProtocol. It provides governments with scientific, technical and socioeconomicinformation which evaluate the risks and develops a responseto global climate change.The IPCC is organized into three working groups plus a task force onnational greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories: Working Group I -assesses the scientificaspects of the climatesystem and climatechange; Working GroupII - addresses thevulnerability of humanand natural systemsto climate change, thenegative and positiveconsequences of climatechange, and options foradapting to them; and Working Group III - assesses options for limiting greenhouse gasemissions and otherwise mitigating climate change, as well aseconomic issues.• The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) The first assessment report of the IPCC served as the basis fornegotiating the UNFCCC, the guiding framework by which countriesbase their responses to climate change. The UNFCCC is a Multilateral Environmental Agreement (MEA) whichwas adopted during the United Nations Conference on Environmentand Development (UNCED) or the Earth Summit which was heldin Rio de Janiero, Brazil in l992. It entered into force in 1994. TheUNFCCC “sets an overall framework for intergovernmental effortsto tackle the challenge posed by climate change. It recognizesthat the climate system is a shared resource whose stability can be4 <strong>Guide</strong> on Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples