This chapter introduces the aims, scope, framing, intended readership, and organisation of the book. We explain why a book offering a critical assessment of the IPCC is necessary and we situate this justification in the context of other global environmental assessments. We point out the intended readership of the book and why it is of importance and relevance for these readers. We conclude by explaining how the book is structured around five parts.

This chapter positions the IPCC in the context of global efforts to understand and combat climate change. Throughout its first three decades, as nations have sought to understand and prioritise climate change in global policy, the IPCC has served as the world’s principal knowledge-making institution. It has created, authorised, and narrated a new kind of global knowledge, profoundly shaped global public imagination of the climate emergency, and provided epistemic support to the call for collective global action to tackle it. Looking forward, however, it is less clear whether the IPCC is well positioned to help support the work of institutions around the world to end fossil fuel use and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The chapter asks, therefore, whether the IPCC needs to be re-imagined if it is to help advance the transition to a climate-neutral global economy and energy systems.