Digital technologies – the missing link between climate action transparency and accountability?

ABSTRACT

The rise of digital technologies poses opportunities and challenges for transparency and accountability in climate governance. This paper examines their impact on information flows and accountability in the context of climate outcomes, analyzing three case examples (World Bank Climate Warehouse, Climate TRACE, and OpenClimate) to assess the potential of digital solutions to improve data availability and reliability, particularly for non-state actors (NSAs). Using Ostrom's ‘rules in use’ framework, we explore how digital technologies shape transparency outcomes, highlighting challenges and unintended consequences. We analyze how these initiatives frame, design, and implement their rules for digital approaches to define their participants’ data collection, purpose, and access rules, all of which are crucial aspects impacting transparency and accountability for the Paris Agreement. Our findings reveal uncertainties in the rules' operationalization for these digital technologies that undermine their potential to enhance transparency. Three key issues emerge: (1) establishing appropriate rules to govern data quality for accuracy and credibility; (2) addressing power imbalances to foster inclusive and equitable transparency; and (3) aligning rules in use across digitally-enabled solutions to promote coordination and facilitate polycentrism in the post-Paris climate regime. These insights shed light on the role of digital approaches in bridging transparency and accountability gaps, emphasizing the need for careful rule design and coordination for effective implementation in global climate governance.

KEY POLICY INSIGHTS

• Digital technologies have the potential to generate new modes of transparency within the Paris climate governance system, particularly at the level of non-state and subnational actors.

• By comparing three case examples employing digital technologies to improve climate data, we evaluate various formal and informal ‘rules in use’ for generating data and facilitating sharing across actors and initiatives to enhance transparency and accountability.

• To leverage the potential of digital technologies in advancing transparency and accountability in climate governance, policymakers should prioritize the alignment of rules in use, address power imbalances, and ensure the creation of appropriate rules governing data quality and structure.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate governance
• non-state actors
• digital technologies
• transparency
• climate data
• accountability

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Lekha Sridar, Climate TRACE, Gemma Torres Vivas, World Bank Climate Warehouse, and Martin Wainstein, Open Earth Foundation for their insights. We thank Varun Subramanian (UNC Chapel Hill ‘22) for his assistance on background research for the Climate Trace case study. We also thank Sanneka Kloppenburg of University of Wageningen and participants at the Global Conference on Transparency Research in Copenhagen in May 2022 for feedback on an earlier version of this paper, as well as three anonymous reviewers who provided feedback that improved our manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no competing financial interests, however, they would like to note that M. Schletz is an Innovation Fellow of the OpenEarth Foundation, A. Hsu is a non-interested advisory board member to OpenEarth Foundation and was one of the 10 experts appointed to the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee that wrote the report, ‘Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Decisionmaking’ (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2022).

Notes

1 A few examples of countries with corporate disclosure regulations, include France (Article 173 of the Law on Energy Transition for Green Growth requires institutional investors and asset managers to disclose climate-related risks and carbon footprint of their portfolios); (Government of France, 2015); the UK became the first G20 country to mandate Britain’s largest businesses to disclose climate-related risks in line with the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (UK Government, 2021). The EU’s Non-Financial Reporting Directive (2014/95/EU) requires large companies to disclose information on environmental performance, including climate-related risks and greenhouse gas emissions (EU Parliament, 2014). China has also implemented mandatory environmental, social, and governance disclosure (Thomson Reuters, 2022).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by a U.S. National Science Foundation award (No. 1932220; PI: A.H.).