Earlier this year, the IPCC’s three Working Groups released their contributions to the organization’s Fourth Assessment Report, a four-part document in which top scientists from 113 countries agreed unanimously that human activity is causing climate change, and that the impact will be far more destructive and earlier than previously estimated.
The report stated that the burning of fossil fuels, land-use, and agriculture practices will cause a rise in world temperatures, which, within a century, will likely increase the frequency of devastating storms, cause sea levels to rise, snow to disappear from all but the highest mountains, deserts to spread, and the destruction of coral reefs.
Thousands of scientists contributed to IPCC technical reports and working groups, including some IDRC climate-change experts.
John Stone, IDRC visiting fellow is Vice-chair for the IPCC Working Group II (WGII), Fatima Denton, Climate Change Adaptation in Africa (CCAA) program leader was the lead author of WGII, and Anthony Nyong, CCAA senior program specialist was the coordinating lead author of the WGII's Africa chapter.
IPCC shares the award with former US Vice President Al Gore, who last year released the Oscar-winning documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, as well as a book by the same name as part of a campaign against global warming.
Ole Danbolt Mjoes, director of the Oslo-based Nobel Committee said that the IPCC and Gore were honoured for “their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about manmade climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”
The IPCC was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environment Program to evaluate the risk of climate change caused by human activity. The organization does not carry out research itself, but involves hundreds of leading climate-change scientists and experts working to collate and evaluate the work of thousands more.
IDRC has been working with the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) since 2006 to help Africans adapt to climate change through the CCAA program.
The CA$65 million joint IDRC/DFID program allows African scientists, their communities, and their leaders to respond to the challenges caused by changing climates.
“Learning to adapt to climate change is a slow and tentative process. By supporting these efforts, we hope to see some of the world’s most vulnerable people better equipped for an uncertain future,” said IDRC President Maureen O’Neil.
With support from CCAA, the Kenya Medical Research Institute is developing a model of malaria prediction that aims to give healthcare workers more time to prepare for climate related epidemics. And in Morocco, research on how communities can prepare for rising sea levels will feed into action plans to protect threatened resources in two coastal provinces.
IDRC has supported research to buffer the effects of climate variability for many years, funding research in agricultural and forestry practices, watershed management, land and water conservation, measures to combat desertification, and protection of biodiversity. These efforts take on new relevance in light of climate change.
The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 10 million kronor (US$1.56 million) was created in the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel more than a century ago and was first awarded in 1901. Past recipients include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former US President Jimmy Carter, and the Red Cross.
The prize will be formally handed out in a ceremony in Oslo on December 10.
