The University of Botswana in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism (MENRCT) will host, for the first time in its history, an Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Lead Author meeting on the 9th to 13th April 2018 at the UB Conference Centre. This IPCC meeting will bring to Botswana over 100 high level climate change experts from nearly 40 countries to work on one of the most significant climate change reports in the climate change discourse, a special report on “The impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty (IPCC SR1.5) ”.
The IPCC SR1.5 was sanctioned by the United Nation Framework on Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) following the historic 2015 Paris Agreement that was attended by 195 Heads of States including His Excellency the President Lt. Gen. Dr Seretse Khama Ian Khama. The IPCC SR1.5 is assessing the feasibility by the international community to meet the ambition of the Paris Agreement; to limit the increase in global average temperature to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 °C.
The meeting which is overseen by the Botswana Global Environmental Change Committee (BGCC) under the Office of Research and Development (ORD) at UB and Botswana National Climate Change Committee (NCCC) under the Department of Meteorological Services, MENRCT is attracting several side events starting on the 5th April 2018 that are organized by NGOs and Academia including an outreach event at Ramotswa Kgotla.