Conference Agenda

‘Data is the new oil’ is an increasing refrain. Climate transparency – i.e., making visible the progress of countries’ climate action through the generation of ever more climate-related data and information – is key to multilateral climate governance arrangements. This is related to the widespread assumption that more and better information facilitates more ambitious climate actions. In recent times, radical transparency — the generation of an ever-larger quantities of climate-related data in near real-time using satellites and other remote sensing technologies – is increasingly touted as essential to facilitating global climate action. There are various initiatives now emerging that are dedicated to producing climate-related data using such technologies. These include Climate TRACE, Planet Labs, the World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases, Carbon Mapper and Destination Earth. We focus here on Climate TRACE as an important and visible new radical transparency initiative. Climate TRACE is a global coalition of nonprofit organizations, technology companies, and academic institutions that uses satellite data combined with advanced AI and machine learning techniques to track not only the total GHG emissions in the atmosphere, but also when and where these emissions are occurring globally. While such data might be potentially empowering or useful, it raises several first-order questions that have not yet been posed or addressed, also because these radical transparency initiatives are relatively new. In our paper, we first analyze the origin and evolution of Climate TRACE, including claims it makes, the gaps it seeks to fill, and whether and how it engaged potential users in identifying gaps and creating awareness about the data it generates globally. We then analyze the type and nature of Climate TRACE’s data available online for two countries: India and Ethiopia. Finally, through empirical analysis in the two countries, we address: (i) What do policy-makers in these two countries know about climate TRACE? (ii) Are they using its data, or do they see it as potentially usable in the future, and why or why not? (iii) What effects, if any, might already be discernible from existence of such radical transparency? These questions are timely because extensive human and financial resources are being invested in initiatives like Climate TRACE, yet their transformative impacts in terms of highlighting where responsibility should rest in taking ambitious climate action (with historically highest emitters, for example), or how it can help to further domestic climate priorities in different national contexts, is little assessed.

In January 2021 the European Commission launched the project "Destination Earth", or in short "DestinE". This project sees to the development of a Digital Twin of planet Earth. This is "a highly accurate digital model of the Earth [used] to monitor and predict the interaction between natural phenomena and human activities". The goal of this Digital Twin is to support the European's Green Deal as well as its Digital Strategy. The European Commission aims to have a " 'full' digital replica of the Earth" by 2030 that can be used for Europe's environmental governance. The knowledge production and decision-support offered by DestinE is data-driven. It rests on the assumption that reality can be accurately represented in a quantifiable form that can be analysed by algorithms. It suggests a 'dataist' view on the world: the belief that huge amounts of data can help us understand and deal with the complex reality of the world. While often window-dressed as 'objective', such data-driven representations are in fact riddled with human choices, values, and reflect a particular perspective on the physical twin (Korenhof et al. 2021). In the case of DestinE, the image of the Earth has its centre of gravity in a naturalistic perspective: reality is understood though the lens of physical sciences and the application of natural laws, further prompted by data science. In a cycle of mutual influence, certain assumptions and values are thus embedded in the design of DestinE, while DestinE as a data-driven technology in turn promotes a certain way of approaching our world, certain values to strive for, as well as directions for interventions and mitigation measures. Blok therefore argues that not human beings, but concrete technologies are the prime drivers involved in 'world-production' (Blok 2021). A concrete technology like DestinE has an ontological impact and contributes to the constitution of the world understood in terms of data and computation. We expect that DestinE will deeply affect decision-making practices in Europe's environmental governance, as well as the authority of these decisions by affecting the institutional context and underpinning legitimating discourse. It is therefore crucial to evaluate the assumptions, values, and scope of actionability embedded in DestinE as it shapes the climate policy discourse. In this article, we offer a first critical perspective on what we see as the potential issues and shortcomings of the expected use of DestinE in Europe's environmental governance that remain underexposed in policy documents.

The use of satellites and Big (Environmental) Data permits an ever-growing range of environmental behaviors and conditions to be rendered visible in real-time, across large areas, to a diverse array of audiences, generating ‘radical transparency’. These radical transparency technologies are increasingly merging with another scalar technology, parametric climate risk insurance. Parametric insurance covers large areas and populations using specific environmental variables such as soil moisture, observed using satellites and historical weather and agronomic data. If changes in the condition on the ground match with the predefined parameters, a payout is triggered. In areas where large populations are uninsured and data about specific environmental conditions is scarce, this type of insurance is increasingly promoted as a tool of anticipatory climate risk governance. In this paper, we investigate how the merging of radical transparency and climate risk insurance technologies changes how climate risk is understood and governed. In this regard, we apply participant observation at dedicated climate risk insurance conferences and content analysis of academic, commercial, and grey literature. We find that the use of radical transparency-enabled insurance schemes can alter existing dynamics of what is made visible, by whom and for whom. Information produced through satellites is often seen as authoritative sources of knowledge because of using pictures and visualizations rather than words, thus assumed as being more objective. However, in order to render information visible and sizeable for interpretation, a whole range of techniques are used to abstract and exclude the complexity of the geopolitical aspects of climate change. Furthermore, insurers can make decisions with regards to pay-out without ever having to go to the ground or dealing directly with the insured. While climate risks are extremely complex and uncertain, parametric climate risk insurance operates with the understanding that all possible realities are known, or at least easily calculated. Thus, the reduction of complexity is also central to the function of parametric insurance. We conclude by reflecting on whether and how radical transparency employed for climate risk governance can further depoliticized approaches to anticipate and address climate risks.

In 2018, the World Bank (Group) published a report titled Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration. The central headline of the report is that ‘By 2050 – if no action is taken – there will be more than 143 million internal climate migrants across these three regions: sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Latin America’. In the report they propose that this number can be reduced up to 80% if ‘concerted action’ is taken in the present. The report has been widely picked up in media and academic publications, especially citing the highest possible number of internal climate migration flows of 143 million that the report puts forward. The report has become central to the discursive space of climate change and human mobility as the numerical scenarios and related arguments are further being enacted and circulated by humanitarian organizations such as International Organisation for Migration and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In the latest assessment report on climate change published by the IPCC, seven chapters enact findings of the 2018 report, including a box presenting the quantitative projections. Prior to this World Bank report and its follow-up reports per region, numerical predications of climate migration have been actively contested in academia. The relations between climate change and human mobility were argued to be too multi-causal, political and uncertain for them to become numerical. Interestingly, however, the future scenarios and estimations of possible climate mobility flows associated with the World Bank reports tend to be accepted and circulated without much critique. This in part is a consequence of the highly ‘robust and transparent’ and scientific impression of the modeling approach used in the report. Building on critical anticipation literature, we argue, however, that the creation and dissemination of climate mobility futures is never a neutral act, and that climate mobility futures remain inherently multi-causal and uncertain. Our analysis, as we will present in this conference, as such aims to demonstrate the political nature of the World Bank report(s). We demonstrate how the imaginaries strategically presented in the reports suggest some sense of certainty and urgency to act on climate mobilities, and how based on these futures, the World Bank effectively enables a space for action to preemptively address a future imaginary of climate mobility through its agenda of development.

As governments, business, investors and civil society increasingly turn to ‘Nature-Based Solutions’ (NBS) as central means to govern the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, a particular form of expertise is jostling for attention in this crowded policy arena – Nature Tech. Nature Tech or ‘Smart’ Tech involves tech-enabled tools such as eDNA, algorithms, AI machine learning, and other forms of tech-enabled measurement, observation and prediction, aiming to enable, accelerate or scale-up NBS. While these Nature Tech initiators are making claims that they are the ‘sexy bits’ of nature conservation, coming to ‘rescue’ NBS hurdles, yet, work is needed to interrogate these claims and their politics. Research increasingly points to risks with these Tech developments, such as its simplifying tendency and lack of nuance gained by human judgement and its ability to replace other forms of expertise. Through these spaces of circulating technical artefacts - ‘technological zones’ – some NBS are qualified as being part of the zone, while others are excluded. These emerging technological zones can accelerate and intensify agency in specific (tech-enabled) directions, with undetermined, dynamic and potential radical implications for how governing nature is accomplished in the future. Yet, we lack an understanding how these actors are jostling for attention, how legitimacy is sought, and if authority is granted within these crowded NBS arenas. Using a Foucauldian approach, this paper seeks to explore the ways in which governance is accomplished and the ways in which power is contested and orchestrated. As Nature Tech’s ability to become ‘authorised devices’ relies on whether they are seen as the ‘right’ or ‘appropriate’ way of governing nature, this research aims to reveal how these emerging Tech devices are seeking to attain and sustain legitimacy, even in the face of resistance. Based on research undertaken through engaging with these spaces by observing, listening and interviewing, attending virtually and in-person conferences and webinars, this paper reveals multiple strategies how Nature Tech aims to become the ‘appropriate’ way of governing nature. By steering agency in particular (tech-enabled) directions, it reveals how NBS are being ‘technologised’ within these zones, meaning that those who can be calculated and qualified through technology become regarded as ‘trustworthy’ – with potential radical implications for how NBS governance is accomplished.