The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's social science problem

... a challenge to the organisation's new chair.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a problem with social science.

It’s not that it doesn’t appreciate the social sciences; it says it does. It’s not that it doesn’t want to include social science in its reports; its fifth assessment report does just that. It’s that - despite its best intentions - it just doesn’t really understand social science's role in climate change research.

This is more than an academic problem. As David Victor (a political scientist) argues in Nature, by shirking the most controversial and most interesting social science, the IPCC risks “becoming irrelevant”.

The IPCC is due to appoint a new chair in October. It will need someone who not only appreciates social science research, but can help it overcome the the traditional science/social science dichotomy that continues to be played out across the pages of its reports.

If it fails to do so, the continuation of its vital work could be at risk.

Social science in the IPCC

The IPCC’s fifth assessment report (AR5), released over 2013 and 2014, shows it is willing to engage and publish some, select, social science research. But the social sciences are still woefully under-represented.

Here’s a breakdown of the disciplines of the coordinating lead authors of the IPCC’s working group 2 (which deals with the impacts of climate change) and working group 3 (which looks at climate change policy):

Data collated by David Victor and Linda Wong from the University of California, San Diego. Adapted by me. Reproduced with permission. Full spreadsheet available here.

As you can see, there is a social science presence, albeit dominated by economists.

It certainly surprises me that such a large proportion of working group 3’s coordinating lead authors - 40% - are physical scientists and engineers. As Victor points out, having just one political scientist leading on a report that deals largely with policy (and therefore governments and other political actors) seems faintly absurd. Amazingly, no psychologists were coordinating lead authors on either report.

It should be noted that some academics were hard to categorise, so the actual numbers should be treated with caution. They do give an indication of the spread of disciplines represented in the reports, however.

Victor makes some sensible suggestions about how social science can be better incorporated next time out. For instance, consulting with the main social science associations and taking steps to overcome the fear of the more uncertain territories social science wades in.

But that will take leadership of a type the IPCC has never seen before.

Dichotomy

The IPCC will elect a new chair in October, and it has a chance to choose a leader who understands these issues and is ready to act on them. Whether such a candidate exists remains unclear, however.

Comments made by one such candidate, the IPCC’s current vice chair, Jean-Pascale van Ypersele, suggest traditional views of the scientific dichotomy run deep within the institution.

At an event at King’s College last month, he spoke about the need for the IPCC to retain its distance from the murky policymaking world. He said it is “very important” for the IPCC to remain “policy relevant”, without being “policy prescriptive”.

This has been the IPCC’s stock answer in recent years when people ask why it doesn’t give politicians concrete policy advice (‘phase out coal’, for example). van Ypersele’s view is that the IPCC must not become a ‘normative’ institution. In other words it can only legitimately tell policymakers what could happen, not what they should do.

But such comments show just how far thinking in the upper echelons of the IPCC needs to go.

The IPCC already makes countless normative choices. It chooses who writes the reports: effectively selecting which countries, institutions and disciplines are represented. It also chooses what goes in the reports, commissioning sections on subjects as diverse as glaciology, economics, and (most recently) philosophy.

The IPCC is a normative institution. No serious social scientist would deny this.

Integrating more social scientists in the process, from start to end, would surely help to deconstruct this view. But bringing some philosophers on board is not the same as dissolving the institutional prejudices founded on the IPCC’s traditional view of the science/social science dichotomy. That will require dealing with the IPCC’s normative role, head on.

Survival

Reforming the IPCC’s processes is not only vital to conserve the institution's relevance but, I believe, its very survival.

The IPCC is normative. The process is value-laden. It simply cannot continue to stubbornly present itself as an objective, value-free, ‘scientific’ organisation. It’s just not true. And the public are smart. They don’t buy it either.

So why not address this within the reports? That means including people who know, understand and can advise on these issues; from the very beginning of the process, and preferably at the very top of the institution.

Maybe Jean-Pascale van Ypersele just didn’t express his views very well that night. Maybe he is the person to break down these barriers and force the issue to the forefront of the IPCC’s thinking.

Whoever ends up leading the IPCC come October, it’s increasingly clear that including the social sciences, and overcoming the dichotomy that continues to dog the institution, must be a priority. Otherwise the IPCC may not only become irrelevant, but will fail to survive another round of such brutal, vital, scientific assessment.