One of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lead authors has highlighted the wide disparity for information between the North and global South.

Dr Friederike Otto said there was not enough information from the global south for the authors of the IPCC reports to make a fair assessment.

This is because most local and regional scientists are not employed to do research.  

The mandate of the IPCC requires the assessment of academic published literature.

“This means there are no academic papers or not enough papers that allow us to understand whether climate change is actually increasing heavy rainfall in these regions or not,” Dr Otto said.

She did not hold back either.

“It’s partly certainly the governance and funding question. It’s also a question on how do we overcome the fact that science is still basically white male science.”

Fiji Meteorological Service Acting Director, Terry Atalifo said Dr Otto’s observations were fair coming from an IPCC lead author.

“The disparity comes about due to lack of research capabilities and funding and lack of data here in our part of the world.”

He said investment in research work, training and upskilling of researchers were some of the solutions to the problem.

All scientific officers at Fiji Met are engaged in operational prediction work.

Mr Atalifo said only a few were engaged in research work for their master’s programme but would require more time and effort to publish such work.

IPCC tends to use publications from world class scientific journals.

“From my experience, students tend to publish their work in world-class journals during their Doctor in Philosophy (PhD) programmes.

“In this case, we need to encourage more students to take up these PhD programmes.

“In addition, we have very few organisations here in Fiji that invest or establish research units apart from academic institutions. Therefore, we do not have dedicated workers to conduct research, an area that needs strengthening.”

Dr Otto made the comment during an online session hosted by the Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN).  

The Network is a new programme at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.

Over 100 journalists and editors from around the world are the first cohorts of the programme, which started in January.

The programme aims to develop climate change coverage and support newsroom leaders in identifying the issues involved in reporting on the climate crisis.

Feedback: rosi.doviverata@fijisun.com.fj