Credit: J. David Ake/AFP/Getty
On 7 January, US President Donald Trump announced that he is withdrawing the country from more than 60 international organizations, including 32 United Nations agencies. Researchers and representatives of some of the affected scientific institutions have told Nature they are confident that this announcement won’t severely affect their work.
The United States is leaving the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which advises countries on the latest climate science. Also affected are the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Both provide scientific advice to governments on conservation and biodiversity.
In a statement, the chair of the IPCC, climate scientist Jim Skea, said that the international body is a “unique interface between science and policy”, providing “rigorous and balanced scientific, evidence-based actionable information to the world’s decision-makers”. The statement adds that the IPCC will continue to “make decisions by consensus among its member governments at its regular plenary sessions”.
The United States is also leaving the International Renewable Energy Agency, based in Abu Dhabi, member governments of which met last week for their annual assembly. Furthermore, it is exiting the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which oversees data collection on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — the international plan to end poverty, reduce inequality and achieve environmental sustainability by 2030. Nature understands that there will be no change to the UN's SDG work because data are compiled from public sources.
Source: Nature analysis.
David Obura, a marine biologist who chairs IPBES, which is based in Bonn, Germany, said in a statement that “scientists, policymakers and stakeholders — including Indigenous Peoples and local communities — from the United States have been among the most engaged contributors to the work of IPBES” and that the news was “deeply disappointing”.
Obura told Nature that reports by IPBES are based on vast amounts of open-source data and that the US withdrawal will not affect the content or conclusions in its publications.
More than money
The United States contributes around one-fifth of the United Nations’ budget, a little less than its share of the world economy. The UN is drastically trying to reduce expenditure, with a plan to merge different agencies and cut thousands of jobs.
... continue reading