Rajendra Kumar Pachauri was the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 2002 to 2015, during the fourth and fifth assessment cycles. Under his leadership the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and delivered the Fifth Assessment Report, the scientific foundation of the Paris Agreement. He held the post from 2002 until his resignation in February 2015 after facing multiple allegations of sexual harassment. In March 2022, he was exonerated of the sexual harassment allegations. He was succeeded by Hoesung Lee. Pachauri assumed his responsibilities as the Chief Executive of The Energy and Resources Institute in 1981 and led the institute for more than three decades and demitted office as Executive Vice Chairman of TERI in 2016. Pachauri, universally known as Patchy, was an internationally recognized voice on environmental and policy issues, and his leadership of the IPCC contributed to the issue of human-caused climate change becoming recognized as a matter of vital global concern.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) set up the IPCC in 1988. The United Nations endorsed the creation of the IPCC later that year. It has a secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, hosted by the WMO. It has 195 member states who govern the IPCC. The member states elect a bureau of scientists to serve through an assessment cycle. A cycle is usually six to seven years. The bureau selects experts in their fields to prepare IPCC reports. There is a formal nomination process by governments and observer organizations to find these experts. The IPCC has three working groups and a task force, which carry out its scientific work.