| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 國際事務與戰略研究所碩士班 === 103 === The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the United Nations in 1988. The mandate of the IPCC is to provide the world with a scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts. Every 5-6 years, the IPCC will produce an assessment, or state of climate change report base on its evaluation of the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change.
The IPCC provides policy advice to the members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Due to its scientific and intergovernmental nature, along with the significance and complexity of the climate issue, the dependency of the global community on IPCC’s expertise and neutrality extends. With the increasing influence professional knowledge has on policy making, international relations scholars propose the concept of “Epistemic Community” to explain such phenomenon. An epistemic community is formed by “professionals with recognized knowledge and expertise in a specific issue-area.” These science and knowledge based groups have their influence to policy making, especially on environmental issues. The experts from epistemic community are needed by the policy-makers through their decision making process. They will help to define the environmental problems, propose contingent policy solutions, and evaluate the possible effect of the policy they proposed.
The purpose of the research is to determine whether IPCC can be categorized as an epistemic community by examining the pertinent literature. The IPCC initiated as an international body that provides scientific knowledge, data analysis, assessment reports on climate change issues. The organization also delivers speeches on UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, urging for the consensus to be made by global governments on the environmental issues. In recent years, the IPCC starts to reach the general public, hoping to raise the awareness regarding severe climate change. Due to its political and scientific character, the work of IPCC fits the description of an epistemic community.
As the leading international body for the assessment of climate change, the IPCC is iconic for its efforts and research reviews. Since the organization will continue its work on the international society; the research hopes to provide a comprehensive understanding of the organization through its structure, work, publications, and participation of the international politics. The research aims to better understand IPCC as an epistemic community that has both the scientific and political characteristics. Furthermore, the research intends to address a new research direction for the future.
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