This week, the Guardian released a bombshell investigation into how fossil fuel interests are penetrating the world’s most authoritative scientific body on climate change. Let’s talk about it.

The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is a United Nations body founded in 1988 to advance scientific knowledge about human-caused climate change and to “provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies.” It does so through comprehensive scientific assessments, published every five to seven years, which inform policymakers on the climate crisis and its potential future risks, and put forward adaptation and mitigation recommendations.

The IPCC does not conduct its own research – rather, its job is to gather experts from various fields, who then study the thousands of scientific papers on climate science published each year and summarize them into comprehensive reports. Once completed, the reports are thoroughly reviewed in plenary sessions by UN member states, who need to approve and adopt them.

During plenary sessions, which take place at least once a year, the hundreds of attendees from relevant ministries, agencies, and research institutions from both member countries and observer organizations also decide on the IPCC’s budget and work program as well as the scope and outline of its upcoming reports.

Over 8,000 experts from nearly all countries in the world have volunteered their time to the IPCC assessment cycles – with six completed to date. They put together dozens of reports on various climate-related topics, including more than a dozen so-called “Special Reports” on topics agreed to by its member governments, ranging from the impacts of aviation and land-use change to carbon dioxide capture and storage, renewable energy, and managing the risks of extreme weather events.

Each assessment cycle concludes with the publishing of an Assessment Report, covering the state of scientific, technical, and socio-economic knowledge on climate change, its impacts and future risks, and strategies to mitigate or adapt to them. They come in four parts – a contribution from each of the three IPCC Working Groups, plus a Synthesis Report, which includes a Summary for Policymakers.

Overall, each report has delivered increasingly stark warnings, painting a clear picture of accelerating global warming, escalating climate impacts, and a rapidly narrowing window for effective action. The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, its most recent, delivered a “final warning” to countries to invest in mitigation and adaptation projects upon which “the magnitude and rate of climate change and associated risks” strongly depend:

It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole … are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years. Global warming of 1.5C and 2C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.

Conflict of interest?

Across the scientific community, the IPCC’s work is broadly viewed as the most comprehensive and reliable assessment of the climate crisis, undergoing “more scrutiny than any other documents in the history of science.” It was even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for its “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

This week, the authority the UN body has built over many decades came into question.

The Guardian investigation, carried out in partnership with a team of international journalists with the support of Journalismfund Europe, identified 20 cases “with strong conflict of interest concerns.” Of these, 11 were IPCC lead authors with ties to Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest petroleum company; Saudi-funded universities and research institutions; and other fossil fuel interests. The remaining cases involved experts from other nations linked to industry collaborations, fossil-fuel sponsorship of academic research, environmental campaigning, and sustainable finance.

The journalists looked at the 223 lead authors in Working Group III, which is tasked with exploring emission reduction and removal strategies, policies and technologies (Working Groups I and II cover the science surrounding climate change and the impacts). The group is currently working on the Seventh Assessment Report, scheduled for release by late 2029.

Experts interviewed about the findings do not recall ever seeing such a heavy presence of people with Saudi ties within the institution and argue they would be in breach of the IPCC’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

The Conflict of Interest Policy was adopted in 2011 following mistakes in its major reports and allegations of financial conflicts involving Rajendra Pachauri, who served as the IPCC’s chairman from 2002 to 2015. As per the IPCC website:

The overall purpose of the Conflict of Interest Policy is to protect the legitimacy, integrity, trust, and credibility of the IPCC and of those directly involved in the preparation of reports, and its activities. The staff of the IPCC Secretariat is subject to the disclosure and ethics policies of the WMO and UNEP. For the purposes of the IPCC Conflict of Interest Policy, individuals must disclose circumstances that could lead a reasonable person to question an individual’s objectivity, or whether an unfair advantage has been created, constitute a potential conflict of interest.

According to an IPCC member interviewed for the investigation, at least one IPCC member, Mustafa Babiker, had declared his role as a consultant for Saudi Aramco on the IPCC’s conflict of interest form. And yet the latest Conflict of Interest (COI) Committee meeting, held this February, noted “with appreciation” that a review of all forms submitted by all the IPCC Bureau and Task Force Bureau members found “no conflict of interest.” Crucially, these forms are never made public, and the COI Committee provides no details regarding its deliberations.

Saudi Aramco is part of the Carbon Majors, a group of around 100 private and state-owned companies that have been responsible for a significant proportion of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution. It ranked first for emissions in 2024, with a global carbon dioxide emissions share of 4.28%.

At least two of the 14 lead authors for the chapter on energy systems, which looks at ways to reduce emissions across the board, also have ties to Saudi Aramco. They are Diego Armando Moya Pinta, who has worked as an energy and sustainability scientist at the company since 2022, and Professor Zain Yamani from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, who, the Guardian says, “was conducting joint research with Aramco’s New Energies Research Division during the past year while also serving in his IPCC role.”

The list goes on. Dr Malak Al-Nory, a senior adviser to the Saudi energy ministry, also serves as one of Working Group III’s seven vice-chairs, a job that requires her to evaluate authors’ conflict of interest disclosures, among other tasks. Saudi Arabia, the quintessential petrostate, holds the second-largest proven oil reserves in the world, with the government depending on oil and gas revenues for much of its income and export earnings.

The nation is part of a broader coalition of fossil fuel-friendly states that have long campaigned against phasing them out at UN climate negotiations, instead pushing for technological climate solutions like carbon capture and storage, which is widely seen as a necessary but limited tool in the fight against climate change.

Professor Hussein Hoteit from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, was conducting research on underground carbon storage that was heavily funded by Saudi Aramco when he was appointed as a lead author on the IPCC chapter on carbon dioxide removal technologies. Working Group III also includes five authors from the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC), a think-tank funded by the Saudi government and chaired by the country’s energy minister, whose stated mission is to “advance Saudi Arabia’s energy sector.” The appointments make KAPSARC the most represented institution in the group, alongside Imperial College London and Vienna’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, according to the Guardian investigation.

Reclaiming integrity

At a time when anti-climate rhetoric is gaining political traction worldwide and public trust in multilateral bodies is hitting historic lows – particularly in the US – revelations like these are catastrophic for science communication. When international institutions like the UN and the IPCC suffer from perceived or actual regulatory capture by the very industries driving planetary degradation, it hands fuel to climate skeptics and isolationist political movements seeking to dismantle international climate agreements altogether.

If the world’s gold standard for climate science loses its perceived independence, the fallout will extend far beyond academic debates. It risks undermining the fragile global consensus required to fund energy transitions and policy reform. To rebuild trust, the IPCC must enforce robust, transparent governance mechanisms that hold conflict of interest disclosures to public scrutiny – before the consensus model breaks down completely.

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