The IPCC suspended its 65th plenary session in Addis Ababa on Friday without agreeing a launch date for its seventh assessment report (AR7). The report was expected in 2028, timed to inform the second global stocktake under the Paris Agreement — the mechanism by which governments' emissions pledges are measured against the 1.5°C target. A coalition led by Saudi Arabia, Russia, India, China, and Kenya wants it pushed to 2029 or later, citing inadequate representation of developing-country science. The equity argument is real but weaponised. The IPCC already draws authors globally and explicitly incorporates non-English sources, grey literature, and Indigenous knowledge. Most AR7 science is already published and under review. Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, and India are major economies with established research institutions — they could have funded developing-country science programmes years ago and chose not to. Critics note Saudi Arabia has a documented history of seeking to water down IPCC findings, including placing oil-company employees and oil-linked scientists on IPCC committees. The timing is the tell. Delay AR7 past 2028 and the global stocktake proceeds without the authoritative scientific baseline that gives it teeth. Governments can make weaker pledges without a fresh, consensus scientific assessment exposing the gap between rhetoric and physics. The 2015 Paris architecture was deliberately designed so that assessment reports and stocktakes would reinforce each other — breaking that synchronisation guts the accountability mechanism. Civil society is split but converging on a both/and position. Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa acknowledged developing countries must have meaningful voice but warned that 'legitimate concerns about fairness cannot become an excuse for endless delays.' Oscar Soria of the Common Initiative group framed it bluntly: 'The answer is not to choose between urgency and equity, but to provide the resources and support needed to achieve both.' A group of 117 scientists — many from developing countries, including several from China and one from India — published an open letter vowing to continue their work regardless. IPCC chair Jim Skea has pledged to reconvene as soon as possible. The fight will almost certainly surface at Cop31 in Turkey next month, where it collides with what is expected to be one of the strongest El Niño events in decades — supercharged by global heating and likely to cause severe damage in both developed and developing nations. The proposed compromise — begin new developing-world inclusion processes now while keeping the physical-science portion of AR7 on the 2028 track, with other sections allowed to slip — is structurally sound but requires the blocking coalition to accept it. Whether Saudi Arabia and Russia accept a compromise that still delivers the physical-science assessment before the stocktake is the central question. Their track record suggests the equity framing is instrumental, not principled. What's at stake is not a bureaucratic scheduling dispute. It's whether the Paris Agreement's built-in ratchet mechanism — science informs stocktake, stocktake forces stronger pledges — functions as designed or gets quietly disabled at the moment it matters most.
