Pachauri, a father-of-three with friends in high places in his native India, learnt the results Monday of a five-month review of how the IPCC has performed under his stewardship.

He has faced repeated calls to resign, most notably over a false claim in the panel's landmark 2007 Fourth Assessment Report that Himalayan glaciers which provide water to a billion people in Asia could be lost by 2035.

The former railways engineer has admitted the error badly damaged the credibility of the IPCC, which was set up to sift through scientific research and produce the most authoritative report possible for world leaders.

"I think this (glacier) mistake has certainly cost us dear, there's no question about it," he told Britain's Guardian newspaper in February.

"Everybody thought that what the IPCC brought out was the gold standard and nothing could go wrong."

He has refused to accept personal responsibility for the claim, which has now been withdrawn, explaining that he could not be expected to check all of the facts contained in reams of condensed research.

Educated in Britain and the United States, where he gained a double PhD in industrial engineering and economics at North Carolina State University, Pachauri is a veteran in the arena of sustainable development.

His critics, which once included former US vice president and climate change campaigner Al Gore, like to underline that he has no qualifications in science.

Gore, with whom Pachauri shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change, once called him the "'let's drag our feet' candidate" to head the IPCC and condemned his "virulent anti-American statements".

They have since made up.

The cricket fan and vegetarian says his focus on saving the planet grew from a childhood in India's Himalayan foothills in the 1950s -- not far from some of the glaciers that have since blemished his career.

"It was so beautiful and unpolluted when I was a child," Pachauri told AFP in 2007. "One saw the beauty of nature at its most pristine. It gets into your soul and you don't lose that."

Outside his regular professional work in academic institutes, climate change bodies and company boardrooms, he has also been accused of raising temperatures with his debut novel that hit shelves early this year.

"Return to Almora" is laced with references to the out-sized sexual appetite of the protagonist Sanjay Nath, whose bed-time capers through university and later life are described in excruciating detail.

"Sometimes I'd be so overwhelmed trying to capture an incident of my life for the book that I would be moved to tears," Pachauri told the Indian Express after publication of his 23rd book, his first foray into fiction.

Pachauri's work in sustainable development is well recognised after decades spent as the head of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi, which works on shaping energy policy and developing green technologies.

He has also served as an adviser to the Indian prime minister and has sat on the boards of a number of Indian energy companies, including state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and the Indian Oil Corporation.

He counts billionaire Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man, as a close personal friend.

He took the helm of the IPCC in 2002 and was elected to a second term in 2008. He was initially a consensus candidate to replace Bob Watson, an outspoken British-American scientist who upset Washington.

related report
Climate change chief says governments will decide his future
IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri said Monday that member nations of the Nobel Prize-winning climate change body will decide whether or not to replace him after a damning UN-ordered review.

Pachauri, a vocal advocate for tough action against global warming, also criticized what he called "ideologically driven" attacks on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which he has led since 2002.

A five-month study after errors were made public called for changes to the IPCC's leadership, stricter guidelines on source material and a check on conflicts of interests. It said the chairman should become a part-time position and change with every review.

The UN-ordered investigation said wide-ranging reforms were needed after the errors revealed this year -- including one which said the Himalayan glaciers could be lost by 2035 because of global warming. This assessment was later traced to a magazine article.

"This will be debated by all the governments of the world and they will decide what is to be implemented and when it is implemented," Pachauri told a news conference at the UN headquarters.

The IPCC is to hold a general meeting in Busan, South Korea in October which Pachauri said would debate the proposed reforms. The IPCC has already carried out four major reviews of the world climate and Pachauri said he would like to be in charge for the fifth, which will also be debated in Busan.

Pachauri acknowledged that the reputation of the IPCC, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, had been tainted by the errors.

But he insisted the core assertion that the world is heating up has not been challenged and he condemned what he called "ideologically-driven posturing" in attacks on the IPCC, which he said were continuing. "There is no let up," he told the press conference.

The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorlogical Organisation and the UN Environment Programme.

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