Dr. Shobhakar Dhakal of the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) has been selected as the Coordinating Lead Author (CLA) for the Chapter on ‘Emission Trends and Drivers’ for the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Seven-hundred and twenty-one experts from 90 countries will participate in as Coordinating Lead Authors, Lead Authors, and Review Editors. They were selected among 2,858 experts representing 105 countries. Dr. Shobhakar and Ferenc Toth of Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel, Global Environment Facility share the responsibility for being CLAs for Chapter 2 of the Working Group (III) of IPCC.
“These author teams, drawn from the hundreds of excellent nominations the IPCC was fortunate to receive, provide us with the necessary expertise across a range of disciplines to conduct the assessment,” a statement released by the IPCC said. Following their selection, the authors will now review the existing scientific literature and prepare drafts of the report on the basis of the outlines of the Working Group contributions already agreed by the Panel, the IPCC added.
IPCC s a scientific and intergovernmental body under the auspices of the United Nations, and it was the joint winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Dr. Shobhakar, who is the Head, Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Change of AIT’s School of Environment, Resources and Development (SERD), was also associated with the Fifth Assessment Report of IPCC where he was invited by IPCC to lead its assessment on ‘Human Settlements, Infrastructure and Spatial Planning’ as Coordinating Lead Author. He also took part in deliberating the content, structure and framework of the Sixth Assessment Report in IPCC’s Addis Ababa meeting on 1-5 May 2017.
According to the IPCC, the three Working Groups will finalize their respective contributions in 2021, and a Synthesis Report will complete the AR6 cycle in early 2022, integrating all the Working Group contributions and the findings of the three special reports that are currently underway. The conclusions will be available in time for the first Global Stocktake, a periodic review of collective progress towards achieving the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement.