Accelerating Climate Action: The Politics - Specialized Research AI at MIT

Accelerating Climate Action: The Politics
of Nonstate Actor Engagement in
the Paris Regime
(cid:129)
Maria Jernnäs and Eva Lövbrand*

Abstract

The 2015 Paris Agreement is often depicted as a turning point for global climate gover-
nance. Following years of diplomatic gridlock, it laid the foundations for a new global
climate regime that invites states to partner with nonstate actors in the transition to the
low-carbon society. This article critically examines the political rationalities that inform
the pluralization of climate politics after Paris and the turn toward cooperative modes of
governing. Drawing on an analysis of initiatives led by the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change that were launched to engage nonstate actors in the
evolving Paris regime, we identify a global governmentality that mobilizes nonstate
actors as active and responsible partners in the quest for rapid and deep decarbonization.
In its search for cooperative and efﬁcient forms of problem management, we argue, this
form of rule nurtures a global space free from friction and opposition where businesses,
investors, and industry are elevated as the real partners of government.

The goals are set, the science is clear, tools are there, and needed actions are
deﬁned—let’s all work together in a holistic and integrated manner to make
the required changes happen.

—High-Level Champions 2018–2019, Yearbook of Global Climate Action

In mid-November 2020, the High-Level Champions for Global Climate Action
convened the Race to Zero Dialogues under the auspices of the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The event was held
online during the two weeks originally planned for the twenty-sixth Conference

* We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on previous versions of this
manuscript. This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council Formas through the
project “Non-state Action for Climate Transformation (ACT Sweden)” (grant 2017-01889)
and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research–Mistra through the research
program “Mistra Geopolitics.” We also thank the participants in the Writing Environmental
Norms panel at the International Studies Association’s 2019 annual conference and the Envi-
ronmental Politics working group at the Swedish Political Science Association’s 2019 annual
conference.

Global Environmental Politics 22:3, August 2022, https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00660
© 2022 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International (CC BY 4.0) license.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Maria Jernnäs and Eva Lövbrand

(cid:129) 39

of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow and was devised to build momentum for
accelerated action toward the goals of the Paris Agreement.1 By bringing
together speakers from business, cities, ﬁnancial institutions, and civil society
in reﬂection upon the actions required for deep decarbonization, the Dialogues
sought to demonstrate that it is both possible and necessary to transition to a
net-zero carbon world by 2050. As outlined in the opening speech by UN
secretary-general António Guterres, “we have the tools to decarbonize our soci-
eties, but the window of opportunity is closing.”2 To close the gap between the
nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement and the
emission cuts required to keep global mean warming well below 2 degrees
Celsius, Guterres called on states to partner with nonstate actors and commit
to carbon neutrality by 2050.

The Race to Zero Dialogues offer an example of the “catalytic cooperation”
that informs global climate governance after Paris (Hale 2020). Rather than
blaming actors for not doing enough, the 2015 Paris Agreement created a cli-
mate policy architecture that seeks to incentivize ambitious climate action by
supporting ﬁrst movers, benchmarking good practices, and iterating commit-
ments (Hale 2020, 86). To build coalitions across states, businesses, cities,
and civil society is a central aspect of this catalytic mode of governing. In the
COP21 decision accompanying the Paris Agreement,3 “non-Party stakeholders”
are formally recognized as agents of change that can accelerate the transition to
a low-carbon and climate-resilient society. Since the launch of the Marrakech
Par tnership on Global Climate Action in November 2016, the UNFCCC is thus
actively tapping the potential of the range of voluntary and cooperative climate
initiatives unfolding across regions and sectors. This mobilization of nonstate
climate action is today also a central theme in studies of global climate gover-
nance. Rather than approaching private climate experimentation and innova-
tion as a sideshow to the main game of UN climate diplomacy (Bulkeley
et al. 2014), a growing scholarship now agrees that nonstate decarbonization
initiatives represent a core feature and central driver of the “polycentric”
(Dorsch and Flachsland 2017; Jordan et al. 2018), “transnational” (Abbott
2012; Bulkeley et al. 2014; Widerberg and Pattberg 2017), and “catalytic”
(Bernstein and Hoffmann 2018; Hale 2016) UN climate regime organized
around the Paris Agreement (hereinafter referred to as the Paris regime).

In this article, we ask what political rationality informs the pluralization of
climate politics after Paris and the turn toward catalytic and cooperative modes
of governing. Informed by studies of global governmentality (Larner and
Walters 2004; Sending and Neumann 2006), we approach political rationalities
as a constitutive element of climate governance itself that deﬁnes and shapes the

1. https://unfccc.int/climate-action/race-to-zero/race-to-zero-november-dialogues-programme,

last accessed February 24, 2022.

2. Opening speech by António Guterres, UNFCCC Race to Zero Dialogues 2020, https://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=ttPV4RMF5iQ&feature=youtu.be, last accessed February 24, 2022.

3. UNFCCC Decision 1/CP.21.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

40 (cid:129) Accelerating Climate Action

ﬁeld of possible climate action beyond and across states. It is a concept that
invites us to consider the systematic ways of thinking and forms of knowledge
that inform how nonstate actors are enrolled in the Paris regime and the speciﬁc
techniques and practices employed to guide and direct their behavior. Our
analysis draws on documents produced by the UNFCCC in relation to the
Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action and the Momentum for
Change initiative. When navigating through this material, we asked how non-
state climate action is discursively imagined and represented, which practical
techniques are employed to give voluntary climate initiatives meaning and
effect, and, ultimately, what forms of behavior and political subjectivity these
techniques foster on the road toward the low-carbon society.

The article is organized as follows. First, we review the scholarship on non-
state climate action in the Paris regime and outline how studies of global gov-
ernmentality can help to interrogate the conﬁgurations of knowledge and power
they rest upon and project. Second, we identify and detail three practical tech-
niques mobilized to govern nonstate contributions to the Paris Agreement:
quantiﬁcation, exempliﬁcation, and partnering. We end by discussing how these
governmental technologies arrange and direct nonstate involvement in global
climate governance. Our study suggests that contemporary efforts to align the
activities of businesses, investors, cities, and civil society with the objectives of
the Paris Agreement are animated by the search for order and coherence in an
increasingly fragmented and complex governance landscape. Informed by the
language of collaboration, acceleration, and low-carbon transformation, this
global governmentality seeks to engage nonstate actors as active and responsible
partners in the quest for rapid and deep decarbonization. However, by restrict-
ing the realm of desirable climate action to that which can be quantiﬁed, show-
cased, and upscaled, it remains silent on the disruptions and disagreements that
underwrite the politics of decarbonization. Driven by the quest for rational and
efﬁcient problem management, we argue, this neoliberal form of rule nurtures a
global space free from friction and opposition, where businesses, investors, and
industry are elevated as the primary partners of government.

Global Climate Governance After Paris
The twenty-ﬁrst UN Climate Conference in Paris in December 2015 is often
depicted as a turning point for global climate governance. Following many years
of diplomatic gridlock, it laid the foundations for a new global climate regime
that invites all states to contribute to the goal of keeping global mean warming
well below 2 degrees Celsius.4 In contrast to the legally binding targets and
timetables for emission reductions included in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the
Paris Agreement rests on a decentralized pledge-and-review system that requests
states to submit NDCs but retains their freedom to determine the scope and

4. UNFCCC Decision 1/CP.21.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Maria Jernnäs and Eva Lövbrand

(cid:129) 41

character of their contributions. While this ﬂexible policy architecture was
central to the diplomatic breakthrough in Paris, so was the involvement of
“non-Party stakeholders” in the new climate regime (Bäckstrand et al. 2017;
Hale 2016). Rather than presenting states as the only governors of climate
change, the COP21 decision explicitly calls on businesses, cities, and regions
to contribute to the implementation and upscaling of national climate mitiga-
tion and adaptation plans.5

The formal recognition of nonstate actors as agents of change resonates
with studies of global governance. Since global governance was born as a
research agenda in the 1990s, it has offered a particular way of thinking through
the character of global life (Biermann 2014; Hewson and Sinclair 1999). In the
ﬁrst volume of the journal Global Governance, James Rosenau (1995) pointed to
the increasing complexity of international relations and the myriad agents that
now are involved in the steering and shaping of social relations across different
spatial levels. Rather than referring to a distinct sphere of global life, global gov-
ernance was here mobilized to make sense of the vast number of rule systems
that now extend beyond and across the territorial state system (Rosenau 1995).
In the study of international climate politics, global governance has offered a
powerful analytical lens for the broader regime complex of actors involved in
collective efforts to tackle climate change (Andonova et al. 2009; Keohane
and Victor 2011). Over the past decades, governance scholars have charted
the rise of networked, market-oriented, and soft governance arrangements, such
as emissions trading systems, offsetting standards, carbon-labeling schemes, and
city networks (Bäckstrand 2008; Bulkeley et al. 2014; Green 2014; Hoffmann
2011). Rather than assuming that the innovative thrust will spring from a mul-
tilateral treaty regime, work in this ﬁeld has suggested that policy innovations
and decarbonization pathways are more likely to emerge “bottom up” through
transnational, experimental, and polycentric forms of steering (Bernstein and
Hoffmann 2018; Bulkeley et al. 2014; Jordan et al. 2018).

Jordan et al. (2015) note how these analytical efforts to probe the complex
world of transnational climate governance have spilled back into the UNFCCC
negotiations and facilitated the diplomatic engagement with nonstate actors in
the lead-up to COP21 in Paris. Already in 2011, the UNFCCC secretariat
launched the Momentum for Change initiative to “shine a light on the enor-
mous groundswell of actions underway across the globe.”6 In 2014, these efforts
were ramped up when the UNFCCC secretariat, together with the COP20 pres-
idency in Peru, launched the online platform Non-State Actor Zone for Climate
Action (NAZCA) to track and showcase climate initiatives by companies, cities,
regions, and investors. The same year, the incoming French COP21 presidency
joined the partnership and launched the Lima–Paris Action Agenda (LPAA) to
increase the exposure of transnational climate action and thereby “create a

5. UNFCCC Decision 1/CP.21.
6. Momentum for Change Annual Report 2017, https://unfccc.int/resource/mfc2017/.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

42 (cid:129) Accelerating Climate Action

positive narrative of solutions and ambitions” (Chan et al. 2016, 241). By
COP21, the LPAA had mobilized more than 10,000 commitments by cities,
companies, investors, and civil society. As Chan et al. note, the scale and sub-
stance of this groundswell were well recognized by government negotiators and
explain the reference to “non-Party stakeholders” in the ofﬁcial COP21 decision.
To strengthen voluntary climate action pre-2020, COP21 also appointed two
High-Level Champions.7 Instated on two-year mandates, the High-Level Cham-
pions act on behalf of the COP presidency to serve as a bridge between states
and non-Party stakeholders, for instance, by coordinating events and engaging
with stakeholders.

In recent years, much scholarly energy has been directed toward the range
of activities set in motion since COP21 to catalyze nonstate contributions to the
Paris Agreement. Orchestration is a concept often used to describe these efforts.
As Abbott et al. (2015) outlined, orchestration refers to a soft and indirect form of
rule that seeks to nudge intermediary actors, such as nongovernmental organi-
zations (NGOs), business organizations, and transnational city networks, to
incentivize their members and constituents to pursue shared policy objectives
in the absence of hierarchical government. In contrast to command and control,
it works through the agency of nonstate actors and their ability to responsibly
carry out regulatory functions. In the expanding literature on nonstate climate
orchestration, effectiveness and legitimacy are central research themes. Multiple
studies have presented methods for quantifying the emission reduction poten-
tial of the UNFCCC’s orchestration platforms (Hsu et al. 2019; Roelfsema et al.
2018), and some have asked questions about their participatory quality, trans-
parency, and accountability (Bäckstrand and Kuyper 2017). While concerns
have been raised about the skewed geographical representation and inadequate
monitoring of nonstate climate initiatives (Chan et al. 2019), work in this ﬁeld
generally presents nonstate actor involvement in the Paris regime as a positive
development that will help states build capacity for deep decarbonization
(Bernstein and Hoffmann 2018; Chan et al. 2018).

Thus far, less analytical attention has been directed to the power at work in
the actual practices of nonstate orchestration and how these indirect and soft
modes of governance structure and shape the ﬁeld of possible action on the
road to the low-carbon society. To this, we turn next.

Structuring the Field of Possible Climate Action

In the following sections, we examine how the UNFCCC operates to align the
dispersed and complex world of transnational climate action with the objectives
of the Paris Agreement. Following Michel Foucault and the broad ﬁeld of gov-
ernmentality studies that his work has inspired (e.g., Larner and Walters 2004;

7. UNFCCC Decision 1/CP.21.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Maria Jernnäs and Eva Lövbrand

(cid:129) 43

Rose et al. 2006; Rose and Miller 1992), we are interested in the systematic ways
of thinking and acting that inform how nonstate governance is accomplished in
the Paris regime. Although heterogeneous and far from a uniﬁed theory,
Foucault-inspired governmentality studies share a common concern for criti-
cally examining the role that knowledge production plays in the formation of
modern governmental practices (Rose-Redwood 2006, 469). The governmental
knowledge that interested Foucault and his followers extends well beyond ideas.
As Rose and Miller (1992) outlined, it includes the range of theories, forms of
expertise, and rationalizations that render political problems thinkable and cal-
culable, on one hand, and the set of techniques, procedures, and practices
through which authorities act on these problems to transform them, on the
other. Analyses of governmentality typically explore how these “rationalities”
and “technologies” of government, modes of thinking and forms of interven-
tion, constitute themselves mutually and translate into each other (Bröckling
et al. 2011, 11).

The conception of government that Foucault’s work has inspired offers a
particular way of thinking about power. In contrast to sovereign power, which is
concerned with the sovereign’s rule over territory and its subjects, Foucault
(1991, 93) described governmentality as a dispositional form of rule concerned
with ordering people and things. In its widest sense, it refers to all those regimes
of knowledge and practice that aim to shape, guide, and direct the conduct of
persons in the light of certain principles and goals. Rather than being something
that a person, an institution, or a state can possess, power is here tied to the
multifarious and dispersed ways of knowing and acting that structure and shape
the ﬁeld of possible action of subjects (Lemke 2012, 17). Governmentality stud-
ies have thus been described as a ﬁeld of inquiry that decenters questions of
political power by pointing at its numerous discursive and practical manifesta-
tions (Larner and Walters 2004). Instead of analyzing power in terms of actors
(their intentions, interests, and resources) or structures (such as economic
forces), it invites empirical tracing of the styles of thought and administrative
procedures, routines, and techniques that inform how we govern and are gov-
erned in the present (Rose et al. 2006, 84; Triantaﬁllou 2012, 32).

When studying global climate governance from this vantage point, we
may ask how nonstate climate action is constituted as a domain of cognition,
calculation, and evaluation in the Paris regime and what practical techniques are
employed to assemble, shape, and order the activities of geographically dis-
persed businesses, cities, and NGOs. Rather than imposing constraints on the
governed, we see power as deeply ingrained in the complex matrix of knowl-
edges and practices that now work upon nonstate actors in the Paris regime
and thereby constitute particular agents, objects, and spaces of global politics.
As Larner and Walters (2004, 16) outlined, this analytical move means “‘brack-
eting’ the world of underlying forces and causes, and instead examining the dif-
ferent ways in which the real has been inscribed into thought.” The complex and
polycentric world described by global governance studies thereby becomes one

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

44 (cid:129) Accelerating Climate Action

political imagination among many, rather than an underlying logic of our
global present. Foucauldian analytics of government invite us to open up this
political imagination to critical scrutiny, and ask what sorts of relationships with
ourselves, others, and the world it makes possible. By gaining clarity on the con-
ditions under which we think and act in the present, we can clear a space for
thinking and being otherwise and thereby make possible the introduction of
new players, rules, stakes, and relationships into the global game of climate gov-
ernance (Burchell 1996, 33).

Method and Material

This study analyzes documents produced by the UNFCCC and the High-Level
Champions in relation to the multiple nonstate orchestration initiatives
launched under the UN climate regime. The documents were selected after a
detailed search through the UNFCCC website, seeking reports, work programs,
and informational material that outline the purposes, goals, and functions of
UNFCCC-led initiatives to induce nonstate climate action (the full list of ana-
lyzed documents is found in Table 1). Our study also includes multiple visits to
the online NAZCA portal. In previous research, scholars have used this portal to
assess the distribution and aggregated effects of nonstate climate pledges
(Climate South 2018; Hsu et al. 2016). In this article, by contrast, we approach
NAZCA as one of several governmental technologies that seeks to assemble and
direct voluntary contributions to the Paris Agreement. To contextualize these
documents and tools, we also observed the opening and closing sessions of
the Race to Zero Dialogues held online on November 9 and 19, 2020. We
selected this initiative as an example of a global space where the facilitation
and acceleration of nonstate climate action is rationalized and justiﬁed in close
interplay with the High-Level Champions, government representatives, inves-
tors, businesses, municipal ofﬁcers, and environmental activists.

However, in line with previous studies of climate governmentality (e.g.,
Lövbrand and Stripple 2014), our analysis is less concerned with “the who”
than it is with “the how” of governing. Although efforts to induce nonstate
climate action indeed involve numerous actors—including UN ofﬁcials, data
providers, organizations, and academics—we do not presuppose or search for
a center of power from which governing is conducted. Instead, we are interested
in “the complex of mundane programmes, calculations, techniques, documents,
and procedures through which authorities seek to embody and give effect to
governmental ambitions” (Rose and Miller 1992, 175). We trace this heteroge-
neous and dispersed “regime of practices” (Foucault 1991, 79) by analyzing
materials from multiple UNFCCC-led initiatives during the period 2016–
2021. While these initiatives are imbued with different mandates and functions,
we seek to identify common ways of reasoning (who and what is in need of
government?) and the more or less systematic forms of governing such proble-
matizations make possible.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Maria Jernnäs and Eva Lövbrand

(cid:129) 45

Table 1
Material Included in the Analysis

Initiative

Title

Climate Neutral Now

Outlining the Climate Neutral Now Pledge 2016

Informational brochure

COP23 and COP24 presidents

Talanoa Call for Action

Global Climate Action

Global Climate Action 2018: Examples of
Good Practice

High-Level Champions

Road Map for Global Climate Action 2016

High-Level Champions and
Marrakech Partnership

Marrakech Partnership

Launch: Marrakech Partnership for Global
Climate Action 2016

Achievements 2019

Race to Zero Dialogues 2020, opening and
closing ceremonies

Climate Action Now: Summary for
Policymakers 2017, 2018

Indicative Marrakech Partnership Work
Programme for 2019

Marrakech Partnership Work Programme
2017–2018, 2019–2020, 2020–2021

Note from the High-Level Champions

Yearbook of Global Climate Action 2017,
2018, 2019

Climate Action Pathways 2019 (Executive
Summary and Action Table): Energy, Human
Settlements, Industry, Land Use, Resilience
and Adaptation, Transport, Water

Momentum for Change

Annual Report 2017, 2018

Global Climate Action Portal

Global Climate Action Portal (NAZCA)
(multiple accesses, 2018–2021)

All material can be accessed through the UNFCCC website.

Our analysis centers around three analytical questions: ﬁrst, what practical
techniques are advanced to assemble, shape, and guide nonstate climate action
under the Paris regime; second, what systematic ways of thinking and knowing
do these techniques rest upon and project; and third, how are nonstate actors
imagined and molded as political subjects, and toward what end? When reading
the documents included in this study, we ﬁrst highlighted text segments that

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

46 (cid:129) Accelerating Climate Action

Figure 1
Overview of the Process of Analysis

(left) Initial
problematization, and (right) identification of technologies of government.

identification of dispositional

techniques, (middle) analysis of modes of reasoning and

responded to the ﬁrst research question. The analysis resulted in the identiﬁca-
tion of eleven dispositional techniques, including “report,” “create common
story,” and “organize events” (Figure 1). As a second step, we traced the ways
of thinking and modes of reasoning used to justify the employment of these
techniques and how these forms of knowledge constitute nonstate actors as
objects and subjects of government. The material was approached inductively
to avoid reproducing any preunderstanding of the role of nonstate actors in
international politics. To ensure analytical transparency, the results section
includes numerous quotes that exemplify the sorts of text segments we coded
(Creswell 2014).

Accelerating Action Toward the Goals of the Paris Agreement
On November 8, 2016, the ﬁrst two High-Level Champions—Laurence Tubiana
(France) and Haikima El Haite (Morocco)—presented the Marrakech Partner-
ship for Global Climate Action. The launch was held during the ﬁrst week of
COP22 in Marrakech and was widely attended by government delegates, inter-
governmental agencies, business actors, city representatives, and media. Dedi-
cated to “cooperative action among Party and non-Party stakeholders,” this
new partnership was presented as an opportunity to accelerate action toward
the goals of the Paris Agreement. As Laurence Tubiana highlighted, to keep
global mean warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, we need to build catalytic

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Maria Jernnäs and Eva Lövbrand

(cid:129) 47

linkages across all sectors of society, and the Marrakech Partnership “provide[s]
a stable basis for governments and non-state actors to align their efforts.”8

Since the launch of the Global Climate Action Agenda, the High-Level
Champions have undertaken numerous initiatives in collaboration with the
UNFCCC secretariat to assemble and align nonstate climate action with the
objectives of the Paris Agreement. The techniques and platforms are continu-
ously evolving, with the 2020 Race to Zero Dialogues as a recent example. While
originally devoted to pre-2020 action, the work of the Global Climate Action
Agenda was extended to the post-2020 period at COP25 in 2019.9 In the fol-
lowing pages, we present the three distinct technologies of government that
emerge from the rich material produced to track, compare, incentivize, and
upscale voluntary contributions to the Paris Agreement.

Quantiﬁcation
The ﬁrst technology is oriented toward quantifying the vast array of voluntary
climate pledges and actions made by cities, businesses, investors, regions, and
civil society organizations. To counter the lack of oversight of the complex world
of transnational climate action, quantiﬁcation is a technology that seeks to
assemble and align spatially and organizationally dispersed actors with the
goals of the Paris Agreement. Already during the launch of the Marrakech Part-
nership, a systematic quantiﬁcation of the mitigation potential of voluntary cli-
mate initiatives was presented as the foundation of ambitious climate action. As
the two High-Level Champions highlighted, both state and nonstate actors have
“called for greater coherence and clarity” to enable effective collaboration and
accelerate the scale and pace of pre-2020 climate action.10 In response to these
calls, several techniques for monitoring, reporting, and verifying (MRV) non-
state initiatives and pledges have been promoted through UNFCCC channels.
The NAZCA portal, also known as the Global Climate Action Portal, is the
centerpiece of these efforts. This online registry tracks and visualizes informa-
tion on mitigation and adaptation commitments made by nonstate actors based
on initiatives registered with a number of data providers, such as the Carbon
Disclosure Project, the Climate Bonds initiative, and the UN Global Compact
(Global Climate Action Portal11). In 2019, the portal was relaunched with
increased possibilities for cross-country comparisons to inspire replication as
well as links to states’ NDCs (Achievements 2019).12 While designed as a

8. https://sdg.iisd.org/news/marrakech-partnership-for-global-climate-action-launched-as-cop

-cmp-hold-closing-plenaries/, last accessed February 24, 2022.

9. UNFCCC Decision 1/CP.25.

10. https://sdg.iisd.org/news/marrakech-partnership-for-global-climate-action-launched-as-cop

-cmp-hold-closing-plenaries/, last accessed February 24, 2022.

11. Accessed November 9, 2020.
12. High-Level Champions and Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action: Achievements
2019, https://unfccc.int/sites/default/ﬁles/resource/ Marrakech_Partnership_Achievements
_2019.pdf, last accessed March 8, 2022.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

48 (cid:129) Accelerating Climate Action

“platform where non-Party stakeholders from around the globe … can display
their commitments” (Global Climate Action Portal), the registered actions have
thus far been dominated by cities and companies. Of the approximately 27,000
actions registered in NAZCA in February 2021, cities accounted for 11,915, com-
panies for 8,740, investors for 2,348, and regions for 669. Since the portal only
accepts quantiﬁable pledges, it does not track or display protest actions or grass-
roots campaigns undertaken by the broader climate movement. Of the 2,293
actions registered by civil society organizations, none referred to initiatives by
environmental NGOs or activist networks like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth,
Fridays for Future, or the like. Instead, the civil society category in NAZCA is
populated by foundations, universities, and faith-based associations, many of
which have pledged to divest from fossil fuels.

In parallel to NAZCA, the UNFCCC and the High-Level Champions also
make use of Yearbooks to track progress, impacts, and results from voluntary
climate initiatives. In these documents, the momentum of global climate action
is regularly demonstrated in numbers, for example, “seventy-two cities world-
wide, representing 425 million citizens have publicly committed to develop
and begin implementing ambitious climate action plans.”13 Similar to the reg-
istrations in NAZCA, the numbers of activities displayed in the Yearbooks rarely
translate into clear mitigation estimates. Although the UNFCCC encourages
nonstate actors to set quantiﬁable goals and targets, the Yearbooks are primarily
used to signal “that the groundswell of climate action under the Marrakech Part-
nership is growing and diversifying.”14 As a governmental technology, quantiﬁ-
cation thus serves two primary purposes. First, by “recording and recognizing
the climate actions of a diverse range of stakeholders,” the statistics provided
by NAZCA and the Yearbooks allow the UNFCCC secretariat and the High-Level
Champions to map, summarize, and evaluate the state of global climate
action.15 The catalytic logic underpinning these numerical efforts is that “a clear,
comprehensive view of both individual and cooperative climate action” will
inspire greater ambition among Parties and non-Party stakeholders.16

Second, the NAZCA portal and Yearbooks of Global Climate Action seek
to “provide transparency and accountability for new initiatives.”17 As such, they
bring nonstate actors under an incipient transparency mechanism exposing reg-
istered actors to the possibility of being held accountable for nonachievement.
Although NAZCA’s MRV framework is voluntary, the portal’s call for quantiﬁ-
able and comparable climate pledges encourages nonstate actors to keep their

13. Yearbook 2018, https://unfccc.int/sites/default/ﬁles/resource/GCA_Yearbook2018.pdf, last

accessed March 8, 2022.

14. Yearbook 2017, 21, https://unfccc.int/tools/GCA_Yearbook/GCA_Yearbook2017.pdf, last

accessed March 8, 2022.

15. Work Programme 2020–2021, https://unfccc.int/sites/default/ﬁles/resource/ MP_Work

_Programme_2020-2021.pdf, last accessed March 8, 2022.

16. Yearbook 2018, https://unfccc.int/sites/default/ﬁles/resource/GCA_Yearbook2018.pdf, last

accessed March 8, 2022.

17. Global Climate Action Portal, https://climateaction.unfccc.int, last accessed March 8, 2022.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Maria Jernnäs and Eva Lövbrand

(cid:129) 49

emissions and ambitions in check. By inviting cities, companies, investors, and
civil society to align freely with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, the
UNFCCC seeks to mobilize nonstate actors as responsible and self-regulating
subjects capable of channeling political will formation (Sending and
Neumann 2006). This effort to govern “through freedom” is characteristic of
neoliberal forms of rule. Rather than seeing the world of free subjects as in
opposition to government, neoliberalism has been described as a form of gov-
ernment focused on shaping and guiding subjects capable of responsibly
exercising that freedom (Dean 2010; Sending and Neumann 2006). While acti-
vating and empowering nonstate actors to voluntarily contribute to the Paris
regime, the NAZCA portal and Yearbooks offer expectations, standards of
behavior, and quality control systems to monitor, measure, and render calcula-
ble the performance of these “free subjects.”

Exempliﬁcation
Exempliﬁcation is another neoliberal technique employed in UNFCCC-led ini-
tiatives to showcase and catalyze ambitious climate action. As a governmental
technology, exempliﬁcation is dispositional and guides action on the road to
the low-carbon society. By compiling good practices, it “bring[s] conﬁdence
to the international climate change negotiations”18 by “illustrat[ing] the grow-
ing scale and scope of global climate action.”19 Exempliﬁcation assumes a lack
of evidence for climate actions that work, which in turn necessitates showcasing
“concrete solutions” that “tell the story of our success.”20 As argued in the 2020–
2021 Marrakech Partnership Work Programme, “the work, achievements and
progress against the … objectives … must be regularly communicated to build
a common understanding of the current direction of climate action and to
develop coherent messages.” To do this, “evidence of systemic transformation
will be proactively and continuously ampliﬁed through impactful language
and storytelling with the overarching goal of ‘communicating for change.’” This
exempliﬁcation and communication of success stories rest on arguments of
urgency and upscaling. “By sharing what is working successfully, efforts can
be focused on actions that have a higher chance of success, ambition can be
increased at a faster rate, and climate action can be increased in scale and
speed.”21

To offer inspiration, conﬁdence, and proof of implementation, the Global
Climate Action Agenda employs several techniques. The most striking example
is the report titled “Global Climate Action: Examples of Good Practices.” This

18. Yearbook 2017.
19. Yearbook 2019.
20. Momentum for Change Annual Report 2017, https://unfccc.int/resource/mfc2017/, last

accessed March 8, 2022.

21. Good Practices Report 2018, https://unfccc.int/sites/default/ﬁles/resource/GCA_TD

_GoodPractices_2018.pdf, last accessed March 8, 2022.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

50 (cid:129) Accelerating Climate Action

annual report provides “snapshots of success stories from actors in different sec-
tors, different regions, and at different levels,” with the aim of “demonstrat[ing]
what is working well and what could work elsewhere.” The Climate Action Path-
ways, developed in 2020 by the High-Level Champions in collaboration with
companies, cities, and civil society organizations, take the practice of exempli-
ﬁcation one step further. Introduced as a “blueprint for a 1.5 degree world,”22
the Pathways “set out the forward-looking actions needed to achieve that
future”23 in relation to six thematic areas24 (energy, human settlements, indus-
try, land use, transport, water) and the crosscutting issue of resilience. Each
Pathway consists of two parts. First, an executive summary presents a vision
statement for the low-carbon society in 2050. Second, the action table deﬁnes
actions required to get there (e.g., policies, technological innovations, services)
and the steps that different actors need to take at different times.

By designating what counts as “good practice,” the Global Climate Action
Agenda sets a frame for the initiatives and forms of behavior that the UNFCCC
would like to see from “non-Party stakeholders.” Successful actions promoted in
the Yearbooks, for instance, are those that contribute to a range of sustainable
development goals, such as building resilience, protecting livelihoods, or devel-
oping renewable energy.25 For the “Lighthouse Activities,” awarded under the
Momentum for Change initiative, successful actions are selected based on their
scalability, replicability, innovative and transformative potential, and ability to
deliver veriﬁable social and environmental beneﬁts.26 These selection criteria
effectively deﬁne the realm of desirable climate action and incentivize nonstate
actors to comport themselves accordingly. Although the 2020 Lighthouse Activ-
ities display a diversity of small-scale climate initiatives (e.g., solar microgrid
infrastructures in Himalayan villages and carbon-neutral ecotourism in Carib-
bean islands), upscaling is a central principle and goal of all these exempliﬁca-
tion practices. Good practices and solutions are those that can be replicated and
transported to other locales and thereby turned into business cases with high
mitigation potential. Consequently, business actors take center stage through
these practices of exempliﬁcation and are thereby elevated as key agents of cli-
mate governance.

Partnering

In parallel to quantifying and showcasing the groundswell of transnational cli-
mate action, the work of the Global Climate Action Agenda also involves a
reframing of political participation in terms of cooperation rather than conﬂict.

22. UN Climate press release, December 13, 2019, available at: https://unfccc.int/news/global

-climate-action-presents-a-blueprint-for-a-15-degree-world, last accessed March 8, 2022.

23. Work Programme 2020–2021.
24. A Climate Action Pathway for the thematic area “Oceans and Coastal Zones” is forthcoming.
25. Yearbook 2019.
26. Momentum for Change Annual Report 2017, https://unfccc.int/resource/mfc2017/, last

accessed March 8, 2022.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Maria Jernnäs and Eva Lövbrand

(cid:129) 51

By portraying all “non-Party stakeholders” as partners of government, now
united in the pursuit of the same overall goal, the Action Agenda works to min-
imize friction and downplay conﬂicting political objectives and agendas. As
governmental technology, partnering takes several forms. First, the High-Level
Champions themselves embody the rationale of partnering and constantly
invent new means of linking “actions on the ground” with the formal UNFCCC
process (Road Map 2016).27 Acting as representatives of the Chilean COP25
presidency and the UK COP26 presidency, Gonzalo Muños and Nigel Topping
describe their work as “integration of action, across all levels of government and
sectors.”28 The designation of government diplomats as champions of this pro-
cess is highly symbolic and aims to spur “Parties into seeking out partnerships
with the various non-Party stakeholders all for the purpose of accelerating cli-
mate action and increasing ambition” (Summary for Policymakers 2018).29

Second, partnering is practiced through regular high-level events and activ-
ities at the annual COPs and Regional Climate Weeks. The function of these
events is to let “non-Party stakeholder leaders demonstrate high-impact collab-
orative solutions, launch new initiatives, make ambitious announcements and
raise public awareness.”30 By displaying scalable and transferable climate
actions, nonstate actors are elevated as indispensable partners of government
and key to collective problem management. A recent example is the “Race to
Zero Campaign,” launched by the High-Level Champions to build “the largest
ever alliance to achieving net zero carbon emission by 2050 at the latest.”31 By
mobilizing momentum around the shift to a decarbonized economy, the
campaign seeks to send the signal that business, cities, regions, and investors
are united in meeting the Paris goals. During the Race to Zero Dialogues in
November 2020, the High-Level Champions brought together partners and sup-
porters of the campaign to discuss what it will take to achieve net-zero emission
by 2050. The Dialogues were informed by the slogan “Together we can win this
race” and were described by High-Level Champion Gonzalo Muños as “a mas-
terclass in radical collaboration.”32

As governmental technology, partnering works to bridge any tensions and
oppositions across the worlds of national, international, and transnational
climate action. Through mechanisms of collaboration, coordination, and dia-
logue, it sets out to reconcile and harmonize conﬂicting interests and thereby
foster cooperative relations on the road to the low-carbon and climate-resilient

27. High-Level Champions, document titled Road Map for Global Climate Action, https://unfccc
.int/sites/default/ﬁles/high-level-champions-climate-action-roadmap.pdf, last accessed March
8, 2022.

28. Work Programme 2020–2021.
29. Marrakech Partnership report titled Climate Action Now: Summary for Policymakers 2018
https://unfccc.int/sites/default/ﬁles/resource/unfccc_spm_2018.pdf, last accessed March 8,
2022.

30. Work Programme 2019–2020.
31. https://unfccc.int/climate-action/race-to-zero-campaign, last accessed February 24, 2022.
32. Race to Zero Dialogues Opening Session, November 9, 2020, available at: https://www.youtube

.com/watch?v=ttPV4RMF5iQ at 2:37, last accessed February 24, 2022.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

52 (cid:129) Accelerating Climate Action

society. By framing all actors as vital for deep decarbonization, it is a technology
that effectively blurs the public–private boundary and turns transnational cli-
mate action into an integral part of the UN climate regime. Through the practice
of partnering, the “non-Party stakeholder” category is also ﬁlled with meaning
in relation to both what these actors are expected to do (what types of actions
are highlighted) and who they are (which actors are brought into the spotlight).
At the closing session of the Race to Zero Dialogues, youth activist Maria
Melanidis problematized the forms of agency and subjectivity promoted by the
Marrakech Partnership on Global Climate Action. “I feel that we are spending a
lot of time, attention, and resources on groups that already have resources. The
Race to Zero Dialogues feature big industry and multinational corporations,
rather than the groups on the frontlines.”33 In response to this critique, High-
Level Champion Gonzalo Muños articulated the political rationality that under-
pins the Global Climate Action Agenda: “We want to move forward towards net
zero as soon as possible. To do so we have to work with those who might be
resistant. Big industry has the capacity and power and need to be convinced in
order for us to accelerate the transformation. We have little time and therefore
need to decide which are the most efﬁcient tactics.”34

The Politics of Nonstate Actor Engagement

Many have described the adoption of the Paris Agreement as a fundamental
shift in global climate governance. Rather than organizing the global response
to climate change around a centralized legal regime with binding emission tar-
gets, the Paris Agreement rests upon a decentralized policy architecture that
seeks to foster and incentivize voluntary action by creating a positive “upward
spiral” of ambition (Bernstein and Hoffmann 2018; Hale 2020; Sachs 2019). In
this catalytic governance regime, nonstate climate innovation and experimenta-
tion does not feature as a sideshow to the main game of interstate negotiations.
The UNFCCC has instead brought cities, businesses, investors, and regions “into
its very core” (Hale 2016, 13) and is now actively involved in the orchestration
of voluntary contributions to the Paris Agreement (Bäckstrand and Kuyper
2017).

In this study we have asked what political rationality informs the plural-
ization of climate politics after Paris and the turn toward soft and catalytic forms
of governance. Rather than approaching the complex and dispersed Paris regime
as a form of existence that is simply given to us, we have here approached it as a
site of governmentality that constitutes particular agents, objects, and spaces of
global politics. To examine how power and rule operate in this global space, we
traced the modes of thinking and forms of intervention that underpin the

33. Race to Zero Dialogues Closing Session, November 19, 2020, available at: https://www.youtube

.com/watch?v=wrftCwLMx1w at 3:06:45, last accessed February 24, 2022.

34. Race to Zero Dialogues Closing Session, November 19, 2020, available at: https://www.youtube

.com/watch?v=wrftCwLMx1w at 3:10:15, last accessed February 24, 2022.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Maria Jernnäs and Eva Lövbrand

(cid:129) 53

Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action and the UNFCCC secretariat’s
Momentum for Change initiative. When analyzing the many documents and
activities generated by these two initiatives, we identiﬁed quantiﬁcation, exempli-
ﬁcation, and partnering as three central governmental technologies by which
authorities now seek to enroll nonstate actors in the Paris regime. These tech-
nologies are informed by several underlying principles and goals, many of
which resonate with advanced or neoliberal forms of rule. First, we found that
the practical efforts to track, map, benchmark, and showcase voluntary climate
initiatives are animated by the search for order and coherence in an increasingly
complex and polycentric climate regime. Through various technologies of quan-
tiﬁcation, numerous UNFCCC-led initiatives and tools now seek to assemble
and align spatially and organizationally dispersed actors with the objectives
of the Paris Agreement. However, rather than constituting a problem of control,
the freedom and autonomy of these actors are mobilized as a resource for legit-
imate and effective governance. Through what Dean (2010, 193) calls “practices
of liberty,” businesses, cities, investors, and civil society organizations are
shaped, guided, and molded into responsible and self-regulating subjects capa-
ble of taking on governance functions.

Second, the many practical mechanisms and techniques devised to galva-
nize and catalyze nonstate climate action respond to the need for rapid and
deep decarbonization. By telling success stories and showcasing scalable and
transferable climate solutions, the UNFCCC secretariat and the two High-Level
Champions seek to give states conﬁdence to ratchet up their climate ambitions
and thereby close the global emissions gap. While devised to harness the crea-
tive and innovative potential of the many climate initiatives and solutions
unfolding across sectors and regions, we found that these practices of exempli-
ﬁcation are highly dispositional and actively involved in ordering people and
things (Foucault 1991). Driven by the quest for accelerated action toward the
goals of the Paris Agreement, they constrain the realm of possible climate action
to that which can be replicated and turned into business cases with high miti-
gation potential. By making upscaling and commercialization prized attributes,
exempliﬁcation is thus a technology that highlights business and industry actors
at the expense of the less resourceful (Death 2011, 15). Although the Race to
Zero Campaign calls on all societal actors to participate in the process of de-
carbonization, successful agents of change are those “non-Party stakeholders”
who can demonstrate high-impact solutions and thereby chart the map to the
low-carbon and climate-resilient society.

Finally, the governmental technologies examined here are driven by the
quest for rational and efﬁcient forms of problem management. Through mech-
anisms of collaboration, coordination, and dialogue, they set out to bridge any
disagreements, tensions, or conﬂicts across public and private domains. The soft
and indirect modes of governance employed by the Marrakech Partnership for
Global Climate Action and the Momentum for Change initiative thereby
become a sort of boundary for the political. Preoccupied with efﬁcient and

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

54 (cid:129) Accelerating Climate Action

consensual problem solving, they represent a form of rule “that takes place after
goals are set and deliberations, argument, struggle, contest, and competition
have played out” (Latham 1999, 43). While involving businesses, cities, regions,
investors, and civil society organizations as active partners in formulating and
implementing decarbonization pathways and road maps, the UNFCCC-led ini-
tiatives included in our study leave little room for contestation over the charac-
teristics of the decarbonized society (what future do “we” want?) and the sorts
of transformations required to get there (what needs to be transformed?). By
portraying decarbonization as an intrinsically synergic process, they remain
silent on the disagreements, struggles, and disruptions that most likely will char-
acterize the journey to the low-carbon and climate-resilient society.

Faced with the dangers of a rapidly warming world, it is tempting to assert
that the solutions to climate change now are at hand. After a decade of diplo-
matic gridlock and failure, the UNFCCC process seems to be back on track and
building momentum for ambitious climate action. Although the Paris Agree-
ment’s voluntary and ﬂexible policy architecture has been criticized for its “dan-
gerous incrementalism” (Allan 2019), it has also been widely embraced by
scholars of global governance as a space where productive linkages across the
worlds of multilateral and transnational action can be forged (Betsill et al.
2015; Chan et al. 2019). It is too early to tell whether the “catalytic cooperation”
(Hale 2020) set in motion in Paris will be enough to break entrenched carbon
lock-ins and build capacity for deep decarbonization. However, a neoliberal and
market-oriented global space that elevates businesses, investors, and industries
as indispensable partners of government can easily detract attention away from
the social, economic, and political orders most in need of transformation. While
engaging a broad range of actors in collective problem solving, consensus-
seeking forms of climate governance run the risk of neutralizing the opposition
and radicalism of environmental movements and function as a technique for
sustaining the unsustainable (Death 2011, 12).

As the Paris Agreement approaches its ﬁrst round of global stocktaking, we
thus call for a (self-)critical governance agenda that reﬂects on “its limits,
silences, and unwanted legitimations” (Latham 1999, 49). Such an agenda will
interrupt the ﬂuency of the global governance narrative and critically examine
what sorts of relationships with ourselves, others, and our warming world it
makes possible. At a time when the transition to a low-carbon and climate-
resilient world is more urgent than ever, questions like “whose transition?”
and “to what ends?” must be kept close at hand.

Maria Jernnäs has a PhD in environmental science from the Department of The-
matic Studies at Linköping University. Her research centers on the ideas that
underpin global climate governance and how they enable and constrain differ-
ent climate change solutions. She is author of the doctoral thesis “Governing
Climate Change Under the Paris Regime: Meeting Urgency with Voluntarism”
(Linköping University, 2021) and coauthor of the article “A Discursive

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Maria Jernnäs and Eva Lövbrand

(cid:129) 55

Cartography of Nationally Determined Contributions to the Paris Climate
Agreement,” Global Environmental Change 55 (2019).

Eva Lövbrand is an associate professor in environmental change at the Depart-
ment of Thematic Studies, Linköping University. Her research examines the ideas,
knowledge systems, and expert practices that inform global environmental poli-
tics and governance. She is coeditor of the volumes Environmental Politics and
Deliberative Democracy: Exploring the Promise of New Modes of Governance (2010),
Research Handbook on Climate Governance (2015), Anthropocene Encounters: New
Directions in Green Political Thinking (2019), and Anthropocene (In)Securities: Reﬂec-
tions on Collective Survival 50 Years After the Stockholm Conference (2021).

References

Abbott, Kenneth. 2012. The Transnational Regime Complex for Climate Change. Environ-
ment and Planning C: Government and Policy 30 (4): 571–590. https://doi.org/10
.1068/c11127

Abbott, Kenneth, Philipp Genschel, Duncan Snidal, and Bernhard Zangl. 2015. Interna-
tional Organizations as Orchestrators. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139979696

Allan, Jen Iris. 2019. Dangerous Incrementalism of the Paris Agreement. Global Environ-

mental Politics 19 (1): 4–11. https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00488

Andonova, Liliana B., Michele M. Betsill, and Harriet Bulkeley. 2009. Transnational
Climate Governance. Global Environmental Politics 9 (2): 52–73. https://doi.org
/10.1162/glep.2009.9.2.52

Bäckstrand, Karin. 2008. Accountability of Networked Climate Governance: The Rise of
Transnational Climate Partnerships. Global Environmental Politics 8 (3): 74–102.
https://doi.org/10.1162/glep.2008.8.3.74

Bäckstrand, Karin, and Jonathan Kuyper. 2017. The Democratic Legitimacy of Orchestra-
tion: The UNFCCC, Non-state Actors, and Transnational Climate Governance.
Environmental Politics 26 (4): 764–788. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2017
.1323579

Bäckstrand, Karin, Jonathan Kuyper, Björn-Ola Linnér, and Eva Lövbrand. 2017.
Non-state Actors in Global Climate Governance: From Copenhagen to Paris and
Beyond. Environmental Politics 26 (4): 561–579. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016
.2017.1327485

Bernstein, Steven, and Matthew Hoffmann. 2018. The Politics of Decarbonization and
the Catalytic Impact of Subnational Climate Experiments. Policy Sciences 51 (2):
189–211. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-018-9314-8, PubMed: 31007288
Betsill, Michele, Navroz Dubash, Matthew Paterson, Harro van Asselt, Antto Vihma, and
Harald Winkler. 2015. Building Productive Links Between the UNFCCC and
the Broader Global Climate Governance Landscape. Global Environmental Politics
15 (2): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00294

Biermann, Frank. 2014. Global Governance and the Environment. In Palgrave Advances in
International Environmental Politics, edited by Michele Betsill, Kathryn Hochstetler,
and Dimitris Stevis, 237–261. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
g
e
p
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

2
2
3
3
8
2
0
3
6
0
8
7
g
e
p
_
a
_
0
0
6
6
0
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

56 (cid:129) Accelerating Climate Action

Bröckling, Ulrich, Susanne Krasmann, and Thomas Lemke. 2011. From Foucault’s Lec-
tures at the Collège de France to Studies of Governmentality: An Introduction. In
Governmentality: Current Issues and Future Challenges, edited by Ulrich Bröckling,
Susanne Krasmann, and Thomas Lemke, 1–33. London, UK: Routledge. https://
doi.org/10.4324/9780203846476

Bulkeley, Harriet, Liliana Andonova, Michele Betsill, Daniel Compagnon, Thomas Hale,
Matthew Hoffmann, Peter Newell, Matthew Paterson, Charles Roger, and Stacy
VanDeever. 2014. Transnational Climate Change Governance. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107706033
Burchell, Graham. 1996. Liberal Government and Techniques of the Self. In Foucault and
Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-liberalism and Rationalities of Government, edited by
Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose, 19–36. Abingdon, UK:
Routledge.

Chan, Sander, Idil Boran, Harro van Asselt, Gabriela Iacobuta, Navam Niles, Katharine
Rietig, Michelle Scobie, Jennifer Bansard, Deborah Delgado Pugley, Laurence
Delina, Friederike Eichhorn, Paula Ellinger, Okechukwu Enechi, Thomas Hale,
Lukas Hermwille, Thomas Hickmann, Matthias Honegger, Andrea Hurtado
Epstein, Stephanie La Hoz Theuer, Robert Mizo, Yixian Sun, Patrick Toussaint,
and Geoffrey Wambugu. 2019. Promises and Risks of Nonstate Action in Climate
and Sustainability Governance. WIREs Climate Change 10 (3): 572. https://doi.org
/10.1002/wcc.572

Chan, Sander, Clara Brandi, and Steffen Bauer. 2016. Aligning Transnational Climate
Action with International Climate Governance: The Road from Paris. RECIEL
25 (2): 238–247. https://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12168

Chan, Sander, Paula Ellinger, and Oscar Widerberg. 2018. Exploring National and
Regional Orchestration of Nonstate Action for a < 1.5 °C World. International Environmental Agreements 18: 135–152. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-018 -9384-2 Climate South. 2018. Cooperative Climate Action 2013–2018: Global Performance and Geo- graphic Scope. Bonn, Germany: German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)/Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford/African Centre for Technology Studies/Energy and Resources Institute. Creswell, John W. 2014. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE. Dean, Mitchell. 2010. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. 2nd ed. London, UK: SAGE. Death, Carl. 2011. Summit Theatre: Exemplary Governmentality and Environmental Diplomacy in Johannesburg and Copenhagen. Environmental Politics 20 (1): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2011.538161 Dorsch, Marcel, and Christian Flachsland. 2017. A Polycentric Approach to Global Climate Governance. Global Environmental Politics 17 (2): 45–64. https://doi.org /10.1162/GLEP_a_00400 Foucault, Michel. 1991. Governmentality. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmental- ity, edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, 87–104. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Green, Jessica. 2014. Rethinking Private Authority: Agents and Entrepreneurs in Global Envi- ronmental Governance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10 .23943/princeton/9780691157580.001.0001 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . l / / e d u g e p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 2 2 3 3 8 2 0 3 6 0 8 7 g e p _ a _ 0 0 6 6 0 p d . l f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Maria Jernnäs and Eva Lövbrand (cid:129) 57 Hale, Thomas. 2016. “All Hands on Deck”: The Paris Agreement and Nonstate Climate Action. Global Environmental Politics 16 (3): 12–21. https://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00362 Hale, Thomas. 2020. Catalytic Cooperation. Global Environmental Politics 20 (4): 73–98. https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00561 Hewson, Martin, and Timothy Sinclair. 1999. Approaches to Global Governance Theory. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Hoffmann, Matthew. 2011. Climate Governance at the Crossroads: Experimenting with a Global Response After Kyoto. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org /10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195390087.001.0001 Hsu, Angel, Yaping Cheng, Amy Weinfurter, Kaiyang Xu, and Cameron Yick. 2016. Track Climate Actions of Cities and Companies. Nature 532: 303–306. https://doi.org/10 .1038/532303a, PubMed: 27111615 Hsu, Angel, Niklas Höhne, Takeshi Kuramochi, Mark Roelfsema, Amy Weinfurter, Yihao Xie, Katharina Lütkehermöller, Sander Chan, Jan Corfee-Morlot, Philip Drost, Pedro Faria, Ann Gardiner, David Gordon, Thomas Hale, Nathan Hultman, John Moorhead, Shirin Reuvers, Joana Setzer, Neelam Singh, Christopher Weber, and Oscar Widerberg. 2019. A Research Roadmap for Quantifying Non-state and Sub- national Climate Mitigation Action. Nature Climate Change 9: 11–17. https://doi .org/10.1038/s41558-018-0338-z Jordan, Andrew, Dave Huitema, Mikael Hildén, Harro van Asselt, Tim Rayner, Jonas Schoenefeld, Jale Tosun, Johanna Forster, and Elin Boasson. 2015. Emergence of Polycentric Climate Governance and Its Future Prospects. Nature Climate Change 5 (11): 977–982. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2725 Jordan, Andrew, Dave Huitema, Harro van Asselt, and Johanna Forster. 2018. Governing Climate Change: Polycentricity in Action? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108284646 Keohane, Robert, and David Victor. 2011. The Regime Complex for Climate Change. Perspectives on Politics 9 (1): 7–23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592710004068 Larner, Wendy, and William Walters. 2004. Global Governmentality: Governing International Spaces. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203458488 Latham, Robert. 1999. Politics in a Floating World: Toward a Critique of Global Gover- nance. In Approaches to Global Governance Theory, edited by Martin Hewson and Timothy Sinclair, 23–53. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Lemke, Thomas. 2012. Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Lövbrand, Eva, and Johannes Stripple. 2014. Bringing Governmentality to the Study of Global Climate Governance. In Governing the Climate: New Approaches to Rationality, Power and Politics, edited by Harriet Bulkeley and Johannes Stripple, 27–41. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107110069.005 Roelfsema, Mark, Mathijs Harmsen, Jos Olivier, Andries Hof, and Detlef van Vuuren. 2018. Integrated Assessment of International Climate Mitigation Commitments Outside the UNFCCC. Global Environmental Change 48: 67–75. https://doi.org/10 .1016/j.gloenvcha.2017.11.001 Rose, Nikolas, and Peter Miller. 1992. Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government. British Journal of Sociology 43 (2): 173–205. https://doi.org/10.2307 /591464 Rose, Nikolas, Pat O’Malley, and Mariana Velverde. 2006. Governmentality. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2: 83–104. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev .lawsocsci.2.081805.105900 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . l / / e d u g e p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 2 2 3 3 8 2 0 3 6 0 8 7 g e p _ a _ 0 0 6 6 0 p d . l f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 58 (cid:129) Accelerating Climate Action Rosenau, James N. 1995. Governance in the Twenty-First Century. Global Governance 1 (1): 13–43. https://doi.org/10.1163/19426720-001-01-90000004 Rose-Redwood, Reuben. 2006. Governmentality, Geography and a Geo-Coded World. Progress in Human Geography 30 (4): 469–486. https://doi.org/10.1191 /0309132506ph619oa Sachs, Noah M. 2019. The Paris Agreement in the 2020s: Breakdown or Breakup? Ecology Law Quarterly 46: 865–909. Sending, Ole Jacob, and Iver Neumann. 2006. Governance to Governmentality: Analyzing NGOs, States, and Power. International Studies Quarterly 50 (3): 651–672. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2006.00418.x Triantaﬁllou, Peter. 2012. New Forms of Governing: A Foucauldian Inspired Analysis. Basing- stoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137284594 Widerberg, Oscar, and Philipp Pattberg. 2017. Accountability Challenges in the Transna- tional Regime Complex for Climate Change. Review of Policy Research 34 (1): 68–87. https://doi.org/10.1111/ropr.12217 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . l / / e d u g e p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 2 2 3 3 8 2 0 3 6 0 8 7 g e p _ a _ 0 0 6 6 0 p d . l f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Accelerating Climate Action: The Politics image

Download pdf