Origin and design

This chapter discusses the precursors and origin of the IPCC, with a particular focus on the developments that led to the panel’s intergovernmental design. When the IPCC was established in 1988 as an intergovernmental body, the design choice was both novel and risky and came to have significant consequences for the panel’s subsequent operation and impact. The chapter summarises some prominent events from the early scientific discovery of a possible human influence on global climate to the various international science–policy initiatives of the 1970s and 1980s that preceded the IPCC’s establishment. It then draws attention to a set of factors that can explain the decision to deliberately establish the IPCC as an intergovernmental body.