Independent body to review controversial climate panel

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - A respected international scientific body will conduct the independent review of the UN's Nobel prize-winning climate panel, under fire for errors in a key report on global warming, the world body said Wednesday.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon told reporters that the Amsterdam-based InterAcademy Council (IAC), which groups presidents of 15 science academies from around the world, will carry out the task "completely independently of the United Nations."

Ban made the announcement following mounting calls for a major overhaul at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose chairman Rajendra Pachauri came under fire for his stewardship of the body.

The world body announced last month that it would launch an independent review of the IPCC's work.

Ban said Wednesday that the IAC would undertake "a comprehensive, independent review of the IPCC's procedures and processes" and would make recommendations to improve its future reports.

With Pachauri by his side, Ban defended the overall work of the IPCC, despite what he called "a very small number of errors" in its fourth assessment report.

"I have seen no credible evidence that challenges the main conclusions of that report," Ban said.

The IPCC is made up of several thousand scientists tasked with vetting scientific knowledge on climate change and its impacts.

But its reputation was damaged by a warning in a major 2007 report that global warming could melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035, a claim that has been widely discredited and fuelled scepticism in some quarters about mankind's role in climate change.