John Sweeney, Ireland's representative on the UN climate change panel - joint recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, notes the extent of Irish involvement in the project
At first sight it might appear somewhat strange that an intergovernmental organisation concerned with climate change should be a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007. Certainly the initial reaction of many might be that one of the science prizes would have been more appropriate.
However, this would be an underestimation both of the importance of climate change at a global scale for the maintenance of peace in the years ahead and also of the unique contribution made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) model over the past two decades.
It was one of the former UN secretaries general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who suggested that the next war in the Middle East would be fought over water, and it was in recognising the destabilising potential of global climate change, that the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme established the IPCC in 1988.
One of the most influential individuals in those early stages was Ireland's Prof Jim Dooge who played a vital, largely unrecognised role, in forging the necessary agreements between the organisations involved.
Since then the IPCC has become the authoritative voice on climate change throughout the world. Its strength lies in the manner in which it encourages governments and policymakers to firstly accept, and secondly act on, the scientific findings assembled by the world's leading atmospheric scientists. The IPCC does not itself do any research, nor does it make policy recommendations. It merely synthesises all the peer-reviewed, published research every six years or so and produces a carefully considered "state of the art" draft compendium.
This is then commented on firstly by the wider scientific community. Many Irish scientists made comments on the draft of this year's 4th Assessment Report. These included the active Icarus climate change research group at NUI Maynooth comprising Rowan Fealy and Conor Murphy as well as several other third-level research groups and members of the Royal Irish Academy's Irish Committee on Climate Change.
The next draft was then commented on by state and semi-state organisations worldwide. Once again Ireland's officials in the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and semi-State bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency made very valuable suggestions.
The end product of all of this was a document which all governments then agreed to line by line at an exhaustive series of plenary meetings. This partnership of science and government to reach a consensus agreement is the real strength of the IPCC model and explains its extraordinary success in leveraging commitments from governments in later climate change negotiations leading to agreements such as the Kyoto Treaty.
Irish involvement in the process has grown steadily as expertise in the climate change area has developed. Irish scientists have been much more prominent in this round than hitherto and among the lead authors of key chapters in the current report are Prof RJ Devoy of UCC and Dr Frank O'Mara of Teagasc.
I was a contributing author to the chapter on Europe as well as review editor on the Agricultural Impacts chapter.
In total several hundred experts are involved in some form in the production of the assessment reports. It is this inclusive scientific approach allied to the "buying in" of conclusions from governments that is the unique aspect of the IPCC model, a partnership which offers hope for tackling the immense problems which lie ahead.
An unsustainable future in which nation states are pitted against each other for dwindling life support systems is ultimately a recipe for conflict. It is in recognition of this that the award of the 2007 Peace Prize to the IPCC makes perfect sense.