Orchestrating Global Climate - Specialized Research AI at MIT

Orchestrating Global Climate
Governance Through Data: The UNFCCC
Secretariat and the Global Climate
Action Platform
(cid:129)
Laura Mai and Joshua Philipp Elsässer*

Abstract

Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the focus of the United Nations climate
regime has shifted from forging consensus among national governments toward animat-
ing implementation activity across multiple levels. Based on a case study of the Global
Climate Action Portal—an online database designed to document nonstate actor climate
commitments and implementation efforts—we trace, conceptualize, and assess how the
roles of data, data infrastructures, and actor constellations have changed as a result of this
shift. We argue that in the pre-COP21 negotiation phase, the United Nations Climate
Secretariat strategically used the database to orchestrate and leverage nonstate actor com-
mitments to exert pressure on intergovernmental negotiations. By contrast, in the
post-COP21 implementation phase, the Secretariat, in collaboration with climate data
specialists, is seeking to develop the portal to track and animate implementation activity.
Given these developments, we discuss the potential and limitations of data-driven cli-
mate governance and set out avenues for future research.

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During the period leading up to the twenty-ﬁrst Conference of the Parties
(COP21), the mobilization of public and private actors across transnational
and subnational scales emerged as a key characteristic of the United Nations
(UN) climate regime (Bäckstrand et al. 2017; Hale 2016; Higham 2017b;

* We acknowledge support of the German Federal Environmental Foundation, Heinrich-Böll
Foundation, and the UK Economic and Social Research Council. We presented an early version
of this article at the 2021 Conference on Earth System Governance and thank participants for
their feedback. Furthermore, we thank Thomas Hickmann and Anna Fünfgeld for their generous
reading of an early manuscript. Finally, we extend our appreciation to two anonymous
reviewers as well as the journal’s editors.

Global Environmental Politics 22:4, November 2022, https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00667
© 2022 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

151

152 (cid:129) Orchestrating Global Climate Governance Through Data

Hsu et al. 2015). These actors, referred to in this article as nonstate actors, com-
prise a diverse set of organizations, including businesses, subnational govern-
ments, ﬁnancial institutions, and civil society groups. While not uncontroversial
(Bakhtiari 2018), researchers have repeatedly argued that the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat (the Secre-
tariat) has played, and should play, a central role in “orchestrating” nonstate
climate action (see, e.g., Chan et al. 2015; Hale and Roger 2014; Hermwille
et al. 2017; Hickmann et al. 2019). In this context, the Non-state Actor Zone
for Climate Action (NAZCA), an online database set up by the Secretariat to
document nonstate actors’ climate commitments, has been characterized as
an example of orchestration dynamics to rally for an ambitious Paris Agreement
(Bäckstrand and Kuyper 2017; Chan et al. 2015).

While research has investigated the actor constellations involved in data-
driven climate governance, it has not fully engaged with data as a means on
which the Secretariat relies to inﬂuence actor preferences and governance out-
comes. Our aim in this article is thus to introduce data into conversations about
the role of the Secretariat and its efforts to orchestrate global climate governance
within the UN climate regime. In so doing, we understand data not merely as a
means of communicating information but as an intervening element that is
deliberately mobilized to reconﬁgure the agency of, and relationships between,
actors (Johns 2021). Adopting a case study approach, we empirically trace, con-
ceptualize, and assess data-driven governance arrangements in the UN climate
regime, focusing on NAZCA and its successor platform, the Global Climate
Action Portal (GCA Portal).

Building on “orchestration” as a conceptual lens (Abbott et al. 2015;
Abbott et al. 2016; Abbott and Snidal 2009), we engage with the following
questions: Who are the actors involved in data-driven governance, what are their
relationships, and how are these relationships shaped by data? How do data-
driven governance arrangements operate, and which logics do they follow?
And what is the potential and what are the limitations of data-driven climate
governance? Engaging with these questions, this article adds to three strands
of literature. First, it contributes to emerging research which has analyzed the
interplay of transnational actors and intergovernmental institutions (see, e.g.,
Elsässer et al. 2022). Speciﬁcally, we add a new perspective to research that
has investigated nonstate actor involvement in the climate regime (e.g.,
Bäckstrand et al. 2017; Hale 2016; Mai 2018), with a particular focus on inter-
actions between the Secretariat and these actors (Hickmann and Elsässer 2020;
Saerbeck et al. 2020). Second, our analysis offers a governance perspective that
complements research on how data-collection and -processing practices, and
related technologies, knowledges, and infrastructures, are relied upon to make
legible and respond to planetary change (e.g., Hsu et al. 2020). And third, we
contribute to an emerging ﬁeld of research that has started to examine the pol-
itics of data in governing changing planetary realities (e.g., Bigo et al. 2019; Nost
and Goldstein 2021).

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Laura Mai and Joshua Philipp Elsässer

(cid:129) 153

In the next section, we begin by setting out our conceptual starting points.
In the following section, we describe our rationale for adopting a case study
approach and detail our methods of data collection and analysis. Next, we
recount the emergence of NAZCA from the period leading up to COP21 and
trace its gradual evolution into the GCA Portal. This descriptive account pro-
vides the foundation for conceptualizing data-driven climate governance
arrangements. Finally, we assess the potential and limitations of data-driven
climate governance, before concluding and highlighting avenues for future
research.

Conceptual Starting Points

Researchers investigating international organizations and multilateral processes
have explored how nonstate actors gain access to, participate in, and inﬂuence
intergovernmental institutions (Betsill and Corell 2008; Elsässer et al. 2022;
Tallberg et al. 2013). In this context, international bureaucracies have been
described to engage with transnational actors to animate more ambitious
policy- and lawmaking (Betsill et al. 2015; Chan et al. 2015; Reinalda and
Kille 2016). Contrary to skeptics (e.g., Drezner 2007), a growing number of
authors have argued that international bureaucracies—such as intergovernmen-
tal treaty secretariats—have gained a relative degree of autonomy vis-à-vis prin-
cipal nation-states that goes beyond the provision of technical assistance and
administrative services (Biermann and Siebenhüner 2009; Jinnah 2014;
Trondal et al. 2010). Using their limited mandates in innovative ways, interna-
tional bureaucracies—and international organizations more broadly—rely on
intermediary support to target actors over which they lack direct, hierarchical
control (Abbott et al. 2015; Abbott and Snidal 2010; Hickmann and Elsässer
2020). This indirect mode of governance has been conceptualized as “orchestra-
tion” (Abbott and Snidal 2009): an orchestrator with limited governance capac-
ity (e.g., in terms of budget and/or staff ) mobilizes an intermediary party with
appropriate resources to govern third parties. It is through intermediaries that
orchestrators manage or bypass target actors and reach their governance objectives
(Abbott and Snidal 2009, 564). In the context of the climate regime, the Secre-
tariat has been described as an orchestrator that, in the period leading up to
COP21, sought intermediary support from nonstate actors to exert pressure
on intergovernmental negotiations (e.g., Bäckstrand and Kuyper 2017). By con-
trast, following the Paris Agreement, nonstate actors have been described to
“give substance to the aims, objectives, and modalities prescribed in the Paris
Agreement”, including by demonstrating implementation options, providing
ﬁnance, enhancing representation, and contesting dominant policy practices
(Bulkeley et al. 2018, 74–75). This shift in the role of nonstate actors raises
questions of how the Secretariat has intervened to orchestrate nonstate actor
activities in the pre- and post-COP21 periods, including by relying on data as
a means of governance.

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154 (cid:129) Orchestrating Global Climate Governance Through Data

Our analysis thus takes as a starting point that with the adoption of the
Paris Agreement, the UN climate regime has begun to move from “negotiation”
to “implementation”. While the negotiation phase, initiated by the Durban
mandate in 2011, primarily focused on forging intergovernmental consensus
to adopt a new, legally binding instrument,1 in the post-COP21 implementa-
tion phase, the primary focus moved to “implementing what states have agreed”
(Held and Roger 2018, 527). Accordingly, the adoption of the Paris Agreement
marked a “turning point” in the development of the UN climate regime (see
also Higham 2017a; Kinley 2017): it ushered in “the beginning of a new era
… that offers the chance of more durable international cooperation” (Falkner
2016, 1108). After years of delay and almost collapse (Dimitrov 2010), the mul-
tilateral process produced a global, long-term, and durable legal framework that
promises to end continuous renegotiation of governance aims and processes
(Bodansky 2016). However, in practice, the shift from negotiation to implemen-
tation arguably unfolded as a gradual process. Even before COP21, speciﬁc
aspects of the climate regime, such as Workstream II of the Durban Platform,
were designed to animate and support implementation activity (see Higham
2017b),2 and the negotiation of the “Paris Rulebook”—the ensemble of COP
decisions setting out the operational details of the Paris Agreement—only began
following COP21. Nevertheless, with the long-awaited ﬁnalization of the Rule-
book, “the UN climate change regime can now focus on implementation of the
Agreement” (Rajamani and Bodansky 2019, 1025).

Case Study Approach and Methods

Based on our conceptual starting points, we set out to empirically describe, con-
ceptualize, and assess data-driven governance arrangements that have evolved
around NAZCA and the succeeding GCA Portal. To do so, we investigate the
evolution of the portal as a single case (Gerring 2004). While NAZCA was
not the only nonstate actor data platform emerging in the lead-up to COP21
(see Widerberg and Stripple 2016), it has signiﬁcantly outgrown its competitors.
As of early 2022, its successor, the GCA Portal, listed more than 26,309 “climate
actions” ( United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
[UNFCCC] 2022). Furthermore, as we explain in the following section, the por-
tal has been continuously updated and formally recognized in intergovernmen-
tal climate negotiations. No other data platform compares to its size, resources,
and political relevance. Accordingly, the GCA Portal offers an appropriate single
case. For our within-case analysis, we use a process tracing methodology
(George and Bennett 2005) to reconstruct the evolution of the portal between

1. UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.17—Establishment of an Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban

Platform for Enhanced Action, paras. 2 and 4.

2. UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.17—Establishment of an Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban

Platform for Enhanced Action, paras. 7 and 8.

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Laura Mai and Joshua Philipp Elsässer

(cid:129) 155

2013 and 2021, expounding actor constellations and tracing their activities
(Beach 2016).

For data collection and analysis, we relied on triangulation. Speciﬁcally,
we conducted an in-depth desk study of available documents, including COP
decisions, UNFCCC reports, and “gray” literatures. Furthermore, we collected
original ﬁeld data at COP24, COP25, the Asia-Paciﬁc Climate Week 2019, the
New York Climate Action Summit 2019, and COP26, and we undertook 25
expert interviews. Using purposive sampling, we selected respondents who we
expected would offer a “detailed exploration and understanding of the central
themes and puzzles” that we sought to study (Ritchie et al. 2003, 78).3 Using
NVivo, we built a comprehensive case study database to code collected data and
identify “themes” that captured patterns and meanings relating to our research
questions (Braun and Clarc 2006, 82).

Tracing the Evolution of Data-Driven Climate Governance: From NAZCA
to the GCA Portal
Our case study data reveal ﬁve stages in the development of the database: ﬁrst,
the emergence of NAZCA ahead of COP21; second, its ofﬁcial recognition at
COP21; third, a period of planning, strategizing, and positioning ahead of
COP22; fourth, the development of NAZCA into the GCA Portal between
COP22 and COP24; and ﬁfth, recent efforts to strengthen the portal’s tracking
capabilities. While in practice, transitions between these phases have been ﬂuid,
they highlight focal areas of activity that have characterized the evolution of the
database.

Pre-COP21: The Emergence of NAZCA
At COP19, a portal on “cooperative initiatives” was launched. Hosted on the
Secretariat’s home page, this initial portal was intended to “enhance” the
“understanding of non-state actor initiatives” and serve “as a platform for infor-
mation exchange and for creating new cooperative interactions” (UNFCCC
2020). At COP20, the Lima–Paris Action Agenda (LPAA), a joint endeavor of
the Peruvian and French COP presidencies, was announced to enhance the vis-
ibility of nonstate actors in the climate regime. It targeted actors that pledged
quantiﬁable emission reduction targets and set out concrete steps for achieving
these targets. Commentators have argued that, politically, these announcements
played a central role in enabling the reaching of the Paris Agreement (Higham

3. Interviews were conducted between October 2018 and February 2020. Except for six online
interviews, all interviews took place in person. Respondents comprised three groups: interna-
tional climate policy experts involved in pre-COP21 negotiations and/or nonstate actor engage-
ment in the post-COP21 implementation phase (respondents 1–9); technical staff at two GCA
data providers (respondents 10–15); and staff at GCA-registered organizations across Europe,
Latin America, and Asia with responsibility for climate data reporting (respondents 16–25).

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156 (cid:129) Orchestrating Global Climate Governance Through Data

2017b, 47–48). In parallel to the LPAA, the COP19 information hub was
replaced with the ﬁrst iteration of NAZCA. The focus of this initial version of
the portal was to showcase the breadth of nonstate actor commitments, thus
“injecting momentum into the negotiation process” leading up to COP21
(respondent 5). During this phase, workshops brought together nonstate actors,
data specialists, supportive governments, the Secretariat, and observer organiza-
tions to discuss possible future roles of NAZCA (see Galvanizing the Ground-
swell of Climate Actions [GGCA] 2015).

COP21: Ofﬁcial Recognition of NAZCA

Whereas ahead of COP21, nonstate actor engagement had taken place on the
sidelines and through informal channels, the Paris Decision—the formal deci-
sion capturing the outcomes of COP21—expressly “welcome[d] the efforts of all
non-Party stakeholders [nonstate actors] to address and respond to climate
change.”4 Furthermore, it encouraged governments to “work closely with non-
Party stakeholders to scale up their climate actions to catalyze efforts to
strengthen mitigation and adaptation action.”5 The Paris Decision thus made
clear that governments, on their own, would not be able to implement the Paris
Agreement or, more speciﬁcally, reach the goals formulated in Article 2. Impor-
tantly, the Paris Decision also “encouraged” nonstate actors to “register” their
“climate actions” in NAZCA,6 explicitly referencing the portal’s URL in foot-
notes.7 As such, with the Paris Decision, NAZCA became a formally endorsed
element of the UN climate regime.

From COP21 to COP22: Planning, Strategizing, and Positioning of NAZCA

Following COP21, political and technical dialogues took place to scope options
for further developing NAZCA. Political discussions were linked to the develop-
ment of the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action (MPGCA), a
COP21-mandated initiative to foster collaboration between national govern-
ments and nonstate actors.8 With the support of the Secretariat, political meet-
ings were convened by the COP21 and COP22 presidencies under the aegis of
the two High-Level Champions (the Champions), who were formally mandated
to “engage” with nonstate actors.9 These discussions focused on how to move
NAZCA from showcasing nonstate actor pledges toward tracking progress of
actors in actualizing their commitments (e.g., UNFCCC 2016a). Respondents
explained that the intention was to shift NAZCA from capturing the readiness

4. UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.21—Adoption of the Paris Agreement, para. 133.
5. UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.21—Adoption of the Paris Agreement, para. 118.
6. UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.21—Adoption of the Paris Agreement, para. 117.
7. UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.21—Adoption of the Paris Agreement, paras. 117 and 134.
8. UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.21—Adoption of the Paris Agreement, para. 120.
9. UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.21—Adoption of the Paris Agreement, para. 121.

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Laura Mai and Joshua Philipp Elsässer

(cid:129) 157

of nonstate actors to address climate change toward building a database that
could show to what extent nonstate actor pledges were actually being imple-
mented. To illustrate, respondent 2 described NAZCA in the pre-COP21 period
as a “repository of good intentions” and a “recognition hub,” while post-
COP21, the platform was to gradually evolve into a “tracking tool” and make
available information on nonstate actors’ implementation efforts. Thus, the
long-term vision for NAZCA, which emerged following COP21, was to develop
the portal into an instrument that would meaningfully capture the progress of
nonstate actors implementing voluntary commitments.

High-level discussions about the future of NAZCA were complemented by
an ofﬁcial consultation process that invited submissions from governments and
nonstate actors (UNFCCC 2016c). Informed by this process, the Champions set
out tentative criteria, broadly deﬁning which commitments and actions would
be eligible for registration (see UNFCCC 2016b, 4–5). During COP22, further
informal consultations took place before the Champions released the MPGCA
founding document (respondents 7 and 9), which conﬁrmed the criteria com-
municated in the lead-up to COP22. Political consultations were ﬂanked by
technical discussions that convened organizations specializing in climate data
processing, representatives from academia, and nongovernmental organiza-
tions. These discussions started to focus on resolving analytical, methodological,
and conceptual difﬁculties in developing NAZCA into a tracking tool, such as
data gaps, issues around double counting, and options for linking nonstate
actor data to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) (see further Hsu
et al. 2016b).

From COP22 to COP24: Developing NAZCA into the GCA Portal

Following COP22, NAZCA underwent major revisions. First, the portal was
aligned with the LPAA “thematic areas”, resulting in an overhaul of the portal’s
web interface (see UNFCCC 2017). In a second step in late 2018, a further
update of NAZCA resulted in the renaming of the platform—it became known
as the GCA Portal. This rebranding was intended to evidence, and make explicit,
the integration of the database into the Global Climate Action program—the
section of the Secretariat that, following COP21, evolved as the focal point
for coordinating nonstate actor engagement (respondent 4). In addition, the
portal’s background IT infrastructures were updated to improve data processing
and allow for more granular ﬁltering. Respondent 2 explained the signiﬁcance
of the 2018 update as follows:

The revamp ties it [the GCA Portal] to the Paris Agreement … Originally,
NAZCA was part of the effort to galvanize the groundswell of non-Party
stakeholder commitments to help reach the Paris Agreement. And in this
context, NAZCA played its role. Now that we have the Agreement, this
groundswell is still important, but at this stage it is more about the imple-
mentation of the Agreement.

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158 (cid:129) Orchestrating Global Climate Governance Through Data

Despite the overhaul of NAZCA’s web interface and supporting IT infra-
structures, conceptual and technical issues remained. For example, questions
around double counting and the localization of actions continued to prove
problematic. Several respondents explained that one central issue of concern
was the localization of emission reductions. In early 2019, respondent 8 frankly
explained, “I think we need to go to the next level on data. I think it is insane
that we are still struggling with those emission data boundaries.” Furthermore,
with nonstate climate action and reporting taking place primarily in Europe and
North America, it became evident that there were signiﬁcant data gaps in the
Global South (GGCA 2016a; Hsu et al. 2016b).

Following COP24, the GCA Portal was linked to NDCs by including
“country proﬁles” that set out information about nonstate actor activities for
each jurisdiction. Individual country proﬁles also included a link to the Secre-
tariat’s NDC portal (UNFCCC 2021b). The inclusion of country proﬁles made
explicit that neither nonstate climate actors nor governments on their own have
the capacity to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement. Rather, governments and
nonstate actors are expected to work together. A press statement explained the
rationale for linking nonstate actor climate data with national climate strategies:

The intention is to offer governments, policymakers and other users a snap-
shot of climate action undertaken at a national level, which can inspire the
replication of initiatives in other countries and help identify the potential for
further collaboration across other sectors of society. (UNFCCC 2019c)

This statement evidences the core logic of data-driven governance in the post-
COP21 implementation phase: by providing policy-relevant information, the
intent now is to “manage” (see Abbott et al. 2015, 11), by way of animating and
facilitating, implementation activity which involves both states and nonstate
actors.

From COP25 to COP26: Operationalizing Tracking Capabilities
COP25 and COP26 witnessed renewed efforts to strengthen the portal’s capa-
bilities to “track” nonstate climate action, that is, to use data to demonstrate to
what extent nonstate actors are actually implementing voluntary pledges. Our
analysis indicates that developing tracking capacities is widely seen as key for
nonstate climate action to be credible. However, in addition to data gaps and
issues around localizing emissions, further factors have hampered the develop-
ment of tracking capabilities. These include time lags between data collection,
processing, and display; the lack of consistent metrics and baselines across var-
ious nonstate actor groups; and the incompatibility of relevant IT infrastructures
(GGCA 2016b). In light of these issues, the Climate Action Methodologies Data
and Analysis (CAMDA) community was ofﬁcially formed at COP24 to support
the Secretariat. Initially, CAMDA met as a loose collective of experts, academics,
think tanks, funders, and supportive governments. At COP25, the group

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articulated the aim to “create a common framework for tracking progress that
looks at targets, ambition, outputs and outcomes to align with the Paris Agree-
ment” (UNFCCC 2019b). Concomitantly, governments ofﬁcially recognized
the importance of developing tracking capacity, thus endorsing CAMDA’s tech-
nical work.10

In the lead-up to COP26, CAMDA evolved into a more structured net-
work, now referring to itself as the Climate Action Data 2.0 Working Group
(CAMDA 2022). The expanded expert network meets regularly, makes available
shared resources, and is formally structured into workstreams that address key
issues in developing tracking capabilities. CAMDA’s technical work is ﬂanked by
renewed political acknowledgment “to support accountability and track prog-
ress of voluntary [nonstate actor] initiatives”.11 In addition, the emphasis on
accountability continues to be reﬂected in the strategic framework of the
MPGCA, which explicitly acknowledges tracking as one of its “six key functions”
for the 2021–2025 period (UNFCCC 2021a).

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Conceptualizing Data-Driven Climate Governance: Comparing Pre- and
Post-COP21 Orchestration Dynamics

Having traced the development of NAZCA into the GCA Portal, we now concep-
tualize how the shift from pre-COP21 negotiation to post-COP21 implementa-
tion affected the database. In so doing, we focus on data-driven governance as
one speciﬁc aspect of the involvement of nonstate actors in the UN climate
regime. While we argue that ahead of COP21 the primary aim of NAZCA
was to orchestrate intergovernmental negotiations, to some extent nonstate
actor engagement was already expected to directly achieve emission reductions,
for instance, under Workstream II of the Durban Mandate (see section 2) and as
part of the 2014 Climate Action Summit (see Chan et al. 2018). Conversely,
even though we ﬁnd that post-COP21, the GCA portal serves as a tool to orches-
trate implementation efforts, nonstate actor activity arguably continues to affect
intergovernmental processes. In the speciﬁc context of NAZCA and the GCA
Portal, however, we identify two distinct governance logics: orchestrating inter-
governmental negotiations (pre-COP21) and orchestrating implementation
activity (post-COP21).

Pre-COP21: NAZCA as a Recognition Platform to Orchestrate
Intergovernmental Negotiations

In the pre-COP21 negotiation phase, NAZCA was primarily intended to show-
case how nonstate actors supported, and in fact expected, national governments
to reach agreement at COP21. Capturing the “breadth of non-state actor climate

10. UNFCCC, Decision 1/CP.25: Chile Madrid Time for Action, para. 29.
11. UNFCCC, Decision 1/CMA.3: Glasglow Climate Pact, para. 89; Decision 1/CP.26: Glasgow

Climate Pact, para. 56.

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160 (cid:129) Orchestrating Global Climate Governance Through Data

commitments” (respondent 9), NAZCA was used to raise awareness about
nonstate actors’ readiness and capacity to take action on climate change. In
the pre-COP21 context, the database can thus be seen as a recognition platform
that was intended to inject momentum into the intergovernmental negotiation
process. As such, NAZCA was intended to discredit arguments that strong
climate policy lacked support or was allegedly too costly, economically disad-
vantageous, or simply impossible. In this sense, NAZCA was designed to
“inspire” governments and “provide conﬁdence to decision makers” to “take
a more ambitious and bolder stance on climate change” (respondent 8). In
other words, in the pre-COP21 negotiation period, the aim of the portal was
to “generate the right kind of mood music to make the Paris Agreement possi-
ble” (respondent 6).

In the effort to orchestrate intergovernmental negotiations, NAZCA dis-
played ex ante information, that is, data reﬂecting estimates of the mitigation
potential of voluntary climate pledges. Thus, while NAZCA set out which cli-
mate actions would be possible, the portal did not display information about
whether pledges had in fact been implemented (respondents 2, 11, and 13).
Drawing on Abbott and Bernstein (2015, 229), NAZCA has been conceptual-
ized as a “meta intermediary” with actor-like qualities that sets “standards for
standard setters” (Bäckstrand and Kuyper 2017, 766–768). Our case study data,
however, reveal a more granular picture. Aiming for inclusiveness rather than
prescribing speciﬁc standards, in practice, the criteria set out by the Champions
at COP22 were applied relatively ﬂexibly. This aligns with our interpretation of
NAZCA as a data-driven recognition platform. Its primary function was to make
visible the breadth and scale of nonstate actor climate commitments. The logic
was to leverage the readiness of nonstate actors to address climate change within
their spheres of inﬂuence to orchestrate intergovernmental decision-making.

To position NAZCA as a data-driven recognition platform, the Secretariat
had to navigate limitations evident in its mandate and resources (see also
Hickmann and Elsässer 2020).12 To do so, it turned to third-party actors—known
as “data providers”—who, acting as intermediaries, provided technical infra-
structures and expertise to maintain the database. Aiming to reﬂect the diversity
of nonstate actors, NAZCA received data from various data providers, each of
which focused on a speciﬁc category of actors. For instance, the Global Cove-
nant of Mayors for Climate and Energy provides information on city-level cli-
mate action, while the UN Global Compact and CDP (formerly known as the
Carbon Disclosure Project) provide data on company- and investor-led actions
(for an overview of data parters, see UNFCCC 2022). During this period, the
Secretariat began to engage with data providers in numerous ways, including
by inviting participation in surveys and engaging in technical discussions. Thus,
in the pre-COP21 negotiation phase, a division of labor emerged: while data

12. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Article 8.

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providers made available technical know-how and infrastructures, the Secretariat
set up, strategically positioned, and managed NAZCA (respondents 2 and 3).

Post-COP21: The GCA Portal as a Tracking Tool to Orchestrate
Implementation Activity

While NAZCA was used to push for ambitious intergovernmental consensus at
COP21, key questions in the implementation phase relate to how to garner
political support for adequate and effective climate policies and programs. In
this context, data are now used with a view to orchestrate implementation
efforts. The shift in the logic of data-driven climate governance is reﬂected in
the type of data that are needed: while NAZCA displayed information relating
to the potential of mitigation commitments on the basis of ex ante projections,
the GCA Portal is now intended to display “progress data”, that is, information
about the extent to which voluntary pledges have actually been acted upon
(respondents 10, 11, and 13). Thus, post-COP21, the intention is to move
the GCA Portal from a recognition platform to a monitoring tool that tracks
implementation efforts. Respondent 2 explained:

NAZCA served its initial function as a recognition hub. But at some point …
surely you will ask: “Ok, but what happened to all these commitments?” So,
there is a need to provide some sort of accountability what is happening
once the commitments have been put in place.

A ﬁrst step in developing the portal into a tracking tool was to include
contextual information, for example, revenue and employee data for companies
and population and geographical data for cities. Contextual information is
intended to enable meaningful interpretation of data and comparison across
actors (respondent 2). The inclusion of contextual information thus supports
the intended move from “static information”, which captures ex ante the
emission reduction potential of nonstate actor commitments, to “progress infor-
mation”, which evidences the actual progress of implementing these pledges
over time (ex post). Respondent 3 described the vision for the GCA Portal as
a tracking tool:

Technical people working in relevant ministries should be able to look to
the platform as a source of information about what is happening in their
countries … That could provide enough information to guide action [from
governments] in terms of which policies will need to be implemented.

Several respondents explained that data displayed by the GCA Portal could
eventually help actors to “connect” (respondents 6, 8, and 13). As an intermediary,
the platform is intended to create a feedback loop: it regularly receives and
organizes data as policy-relevant information to “manage” (Abbott et al. 2015, 11),
by way of animating and facilitating, state and nonstate activity in the implemen-
tation arena (see Figure 1). Speciﬁcally, ex post progress information is seen not

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Figure 1
Data-Driven Orchestration Dynamics in the Post-COP21 Climate Regime

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only to increase transparency, accountability, and credibility but also to facili-
tate learning, knowledge integration, and collaboration (Hale et al. 2020). The
implementer relationship, to be facilitated through orchestration activity, thus
comprises cooperative partnerships between nonstate actors and national gov-
ernments. This aligns with research suggesting that strong domestic climate pol-
icy supports nonstate climate action, and vice versa (Andonova et al. 2017;
Kahler 2017). Respondent 9 explained how nonstate actors can inspire domes-
tic climate action:

They [nonstate actors] can be kind of an advance guard of where they want
to go … These signals … can then push governments further and faster
towards taking action on climate change than they otherwise would have
done. That is the sort of a strange state of affairs, but that is how we found
it to play out.

Thus, while states are tasked with incentivizing and supporting implementation
through adequate regulatory frameworks, nonstate actors are expected to
directly contribute to mitigation, adaptation, and financing efforts. As Falkner
(2016, 1123) explains, “governmental regulation can provide a supportive
regulatory framework, but it is companies that decide on the direction of tech-
nological innovation, R&D expenditure, and investment ﬂows.” As such, in the
post-COP21 implementation phase, nonstate actors have entered the imple-
mentation arena, taking up an integral function next to national governments.
Building on the division of labor between the Secretariat and data pro-
viders that emerged pre-COP21, we conceptualize their roles in the post-
COP21 orchestration setting as follows: while the Secretariat functions as the
political orchestrator, data providers and CAMDA can be conceived as technical
orchestrators (see Figure 1). Political orchestration involves providing authority
and legitimacy, convening relevant stakeholders, managing the portal, and host-
ing it on the UNFCCC web pages. In so doing, the political orchestrator strate-
gically positions the database and provides for global visibility. The clout of the
Secretariat, as an international bureaucracy embedded in the UN system, is seen
as key for successful political orchestration (respondents 7, 9, 17, and 20).
Meanwhile, data providers and CAMDA, as technical orchestrators, provide
know-how and resources to maintain the portal. As described in the preceding
section, CAMDA functions as a forum that convenes technical experts, data pro-
viders, and Secretariat staff, who collaborate to develop methodologies and
metrics to track nonstate actor implementation activity. Contrary to their role
as intermediaries in the pre-COP21 period, data providers now directly work
with the Secretariat through CAMDA and can therefore be perceived as orches-
trators in their own right. Importantly, it is only if political and technical
orchestrators work together that data-driven governance arrangements can be
operationalized. Without data providers, the GCA Portal would not have any
data to display, and without CAMDA, there would be insufﬁcient technical
expertise to develop required methodologies and metrics. Likewise, without

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164 (cid:129) Orchestrating Global Climate Governance Through Data

the clout of the Secretariat, the portal would have to ﬁnd other ways to gain
visibility and resonance in the climate regime. The relationship between orches-
trating actors is thus best characterized as one of direct collaboration and
mutual dependence.

Assessing Data-Driven Climate Governance in the Post-COP21
Implementation Phase

In the post-COP21 implementation phase, data-driven climate governance can
foster collaboration between states and nonstate actors in two ways. First, prog-
ress data demonstrates—in quantitative terms—to what extent nonstate actor
climate action contributes to reaching the Paris Agreement goals. Second, data
explicates the extent to which nonstate actors are receptive to climate policies. A
large number of registered actions signals a “can-do” attitude to political deci-
sion makers (respondents 2, 3, and 14). Accordingly, data-driven governance
may allow national governments to learn about nonstate climate action and
gain conﬁdence that relevant political interventions will fall on fertile ground,
thus creating the conditions for increasing political feasibility of ambitious
domestic climate policy (see also Gilligan and Vandenbergh 2020; Hale et al.
2020). The theory of change underpinning data-driven governance can thus
be described as a “virtuous cycle”—a dynamic of mutually reinforcing imple-
mentation activity that spans jurisdictions and scales of governance. Accord-
ingly, data sharing by private-sector and government entities is intended to lead
to increased conﬁdence in the counterpart’s readiness to take required action:
“bold government policies and private sector leadership reinforce each other,
and together take climate action to the next level” (Dickerson et al. 2018, 2).

However, it is yet to be seen how effective the GCA Portal will be in
orchestrating implementation activity. A recent review of NDCs suggests that
“there is scope for countries to broaden their linkages to NSAs [nonstate actors]
… to further catalyze engagement” (Hsu et al. 2019, 443). When updating
NDCs, national agencies could eventually use nonstate actor data to understand
how economic sectors and subnational authorities can contribute to meeting
domestic climate targets. If a future version of the GCA Portal provides such
data, it will help countries—especially those that lack resources—to access
relevant information (Röser et al. 2020, 421–423). Analytical and conceptual
work to operationalize data-driven climate governance is ongoing. CAMDA
has set itself the goal to develop “draft plans for a framework for tracking indi-
vidual and cooperative actions” and to “increase interchangeability of data
between providers” to “optimize data ﬂow” (UNFCCC 2019a). This requires
the group to tackle both conceptual and practical issues that have to date been
inhibiting the portal’s progression into a tracking platform.

While data-driven governance entails opportunities for facilitating global
efforts to respond to climate change, it is crucial to acknowledge its limits. First,
it will be key to ensure that data are accurate, global, and meaningful. “Patchy

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reporting” and inconsistent metrics and disclosure methodologies mean that
available data are not always comparable and up to date (Hsu et al. 2016a,
303). Addressing these issues requires suitable metrics and reporting infrastruc-
tures, that is, IT systems that allow the processing of large amounts of data
(respondent 2). While progress has been made in formulating appropriate
metrics and reporting methodologies (see Hale et al. 2020), it is still unclear
how nonstate actors from countries with limited ﬁnancial resources and little
technical expertise can be supported (respondents 20, 21, and 22). Furthermore,
it is essential to acknowledge that data-driven climate governance conforms to
Western logics and as such is not universal. Respondent 5 noted:

Disclosure is obviously very centered in the Western hemisphere. If you look
at NAZCA, at the moment … you see a map that has a massive energy
towards Europe and North America. When it comes to other regions, there
are huge gaps.

Thus, strategic engagement with a more diverse set of actors is needed. If data-
driven climate governance is to be effective, credible, and legitimate, ensuring
participation across all regions and actor groups will be key.

The second limitation of data-driven governance revolves around the
notion that data will not “do the job” on their own. Simply providing informa-
tion cannot—by itself—shift the political and economic parameters by which
decision makers allocate resources and formulate policy. As Aykut and colleagues
(2020, 13) note, “It might be overly simplistic to assume that highlighting pri-
vate climate action would automatically increase state ambitions. While the
focus on businesses and cities may momentarily divert public attention away
from state commitments, it clearly was not sufﬁcient to unlock political stale-
mate.” As such, in addition to data itself, facilitative mechanisms are needed.
These could include regional and national programs that have the potential
to link government and nonstate actor activities. As Chan and colleagues
(2021, 10) convincingly argue, due to their proximity to “speciﬁc implementa-
tion contexts and policy demands”, regional and national platforms and pro-
grams are likely to be more effective in encouraging and facilitating cooperation
between governments and nonstate actors. Furthermore, data-driven climate
governance could be more explicitly linked to other policy priorities, highlight-
ing, for instance, synergies with issues that are likely to resonate with both gov-
ernment and nonstate actors, including energy, food and water security, and
human and ecological health (see Chan et al. 2021).

Finally, “dataﬁcation” processes are rarely as complete and accurate as may
be assumed, thus raising questions about how to acknowledge and deal with
inbuilt uncertainties, false assumptions, and prejudices. In other words, there
is a need to critically engage with the assumption that data are “neutral”. Data
collection and processing activities are based on embedded normative judg-
ments as to what counts and what does not. Data, therefore, are political and
must be recognized as such (see Ellis 2020). Failure to do so risks undermining

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166 (cid:129) Orchestrating Global Climate Governance Through Data

not only the effectiveness but also the credibility and legitimacy of data-driven
climate governance. Furthermore, it is necessary to explicitly acknowledge that
the GCA Portal currently privileges implementation actions that can be quanti-
ﬁed, while other contributions, such as those relating to more lateral impacts
(e.g., diffusing best practices, organizational learning, and knowledge transfer),
may not be easily captured (van der Ven et al. 2017). An important question,
thus, is how data-driven governance may be complemented with mechanisms
that acknowledge implementation activities that do not ﬁt standardized report-
ing formats (respondent 14).

Conclusions

In this article, we empirically investigated, conceptualized, and assessed data-
driven governance arrangements in the UN climate regime. Adopting a case
study approach, we traced the evolution of NAZCA and its successor, the
GCA Portal, between 2013 and 2021. Our analysis details how the evolution
of the portal reﬂects the broader trend of increasing nonstate actor involvement
in the climate regime. Furthermore, it provides an empirical analysis of how the
portal has evolved to account for the shift in focus that occurred with the adop-
tion of the Paris Agreement at COP21: from orchestrating intergovernmental
negotiations to orchestrating state and nonstate actor implementation activities.
Seeking to conceptualize data-driven governance arrangements in the post-
COP21 implementation period, we analyzed how the Secretariat, as a political
orchestrator, strategically positions and manages the database, while data
providers and CAMDA, as technical orchestrators, provide data, technical
know-how, and IT infrastructures to support the platform. We suggested that,
in the post-COP21 context, the portal is now intended to document state and
nonstate actor implementation activity. Finally, we highlighted the potential of
data-driven climate governance, while also discussing important limitations,
including those relating to participation, access, legitimacy, and effectiveness.

To conclude, we identify three lines of future research. First, in light of the
ongoing evolution of the GCA Portal, empirical and conceptual questions will
arise regarding the development of orchestration dynamics over time. For
instance, with the recent reconstitution of CAMDA, it remains to be seen how
the relationships and dynamics between orchestrating actors will further evolve.
In addition, it will be key to investigate whether, and in what ways, the GCA
Portal will relate to the ﬁrst Global Stocktake—the next key milestone in imple-
menting the Paris Agreement. Recent announcements by the Champions suggest
that the GCA Portal will have a role to play in this respect (UNFCCC 2021a).
Moreover, future research may provide insights regarding the pathways,
impacts, and effects of data-driven governance. In this context, the global
perspective provided in this article could be complemented with regional and
local case studies. Second, as our assessment of the potential and limitations of
data-driven climate governance shows, future research should include not only

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empirical and conceptual approaches but also critical perspectives. Speciﬁcally,
it will be key to consider issues around participation and how to bolster the
inclusiveness of data-driven climate governance. And third, technological
advancements, such as real-time satellite-based emission tracking technologies
and intelligent data-processing systems, including machine learning, will shift
reference points as to what is regarded as technologically feasible. These devel-
opments will raise questions regarding the agency of data and data-processing
infrastructures and their roles in developing adequate governance responses to
planetary change.

Laura Mai is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Public Law and
Governance at Tilburg University. She obtained her PhD from King’s College
London, where she was a member of the Centre for Climate Law and Gover-
nance. Her doctoral research offered a sociolegal perspective on nonstate actor
involvement in the UN climate regime following the adoption of the Paris
Agreement. Laura’s publications cover climate change and Anthropocene gover-
nance and bring together perspectives from the social sciences and law.

Joshua Philipp Elsässer is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Economics and
Social Sciences at the University of Potsdam. His publications focus on global
environmental governance, with an emphasis on institutional interactions,
transnational relations, and international bureaucracies. Joshua also conducts
research for the “Institutionalizing Low Carbon Development” project at Pots-
dam University, which is funded by the German Research Foundation.

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3 Orchestrating Global Climate image

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