The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's synthesis report -- to be released on March 20 -- will detail observed and projected changes in Earth's climate system; past and future impacts such as devastating heatwaves, flooding and rising seas; and ways to halt the carbon pollution pushing Earth toward an unliveable state. "The synthesis report matters because it will be the last IPCC product for some years, and one of the major sources of knowledge to be considered in the first global stocktake under the Paris Agreement," Oliver Geden, one of report's lead authors and a senior fellow at the German Institute for International Security Affairs, told AFP. "Over time, IPCC meetings became more politicised as government representatives -- mainly, but not exclusively, from oil-producing states -- interfered in the scientists' discussions," the journal Nature said in a recent editorial