IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri has the “full support” of the Indian government following an independent review of the climate agency’s operation, a senior minister has stated.

The review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was largely positive, but did suggest leadership positions should be regularly changed (see: Climate panel must adapt to survive). As Pachauri is in his second six-year term, there has been renewed sniping at his leadership from certain quarters.

Yesterday Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister, said that “Pachauri has the full support of the government.” (AFP.)

The criticism is still coming thick and fast though. Yesterday the Financial Times declared, “Although Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC chairman since 2002, has been unfairly vilified in some quarters, his recent performance under pressure has not helped the cause of climate science; the time has come for him to move on.”

The Daily Telegraph’s Geoffrey Lean has written a critique headlined, “IPCC’s Rajendra Pachauri is damaging the world”. The Telegraph also has Myles Allen, a climate researcher at the University Of Oxford, warning that the proposed reforms of the IPCC could actually lead to more mistakes.

“They could actually make it worse because the more time scientists are spending on bureaucracy the less time they have to deal with the scientific questions they should be dealing with,” says Allen, who served on the last IPCC review panel. “There is a real danger that the only people that are willing to do it are people put forward by the Government, which will further politicise the thing.”

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