The dispute over the Global Environment Outlook echoes a growing trend in consensus-based negotiations where oil-producing countries in particular are frustrating efforts to address pollution from fossil fuels and plastic.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said it was the first time that countries had failed to produce a politically-negotiated summary of the mammoth report, which is published roughly every five years and involves hundreds of scientists.
“It’s regrettable,” UNEP executive director Inger Andersen told AFP but added “the integrity of the report” remained above question.
Since first being published in 1997, UNEP’s flagship outlook reports have been accompanied by a summary for policymakers: a political statement, negotiated line by line, that distils the science into plain language for governments.
Under United Nations rules, this can only be approved by consensus as it serves as a collective understanding of the latest science in a way policy leaders can act upon.
But at a five-day meeting in late October to approve the summary, sharp divisions over the text made consensus impossible.
Major oil producers Saudi Arabia and the United States opposed references to phasing out fossil fuels, which are used to make plastic, and when burned are the primary driver of climate change, according to minutes of the meeting seen by AFP.
