The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the World Meteorological Organization and by the United Nations Environment Programme in 1988. It is based in Geneva, Switzerland. As an agency of the United Nations (UN), the IPCC seeks to use the information it provides as a tool for promoting its human development goals. It is considered by many to be the most important source of information on climate change. It seeks to be a model for scientific interaction and government policymaking so that it can be policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive.

[Page 241]The reason for creating the IPCC was to provide decision makers and other parties interested in climate change with an open, transparent source of objective information about climate change. To have ...