The functions and politics of data in climate law and governance

Paper by Laura Mai & Joshua Philipp Elsässer: “Data play a central role in climate law and governance. They inform decision-making and arise from governance mechanisms, such as reporting and disclosure requirements. Beyond supporting climate law and governance, however, data, in a very real sense, do governing work: they constitute and restructure relations between actors, create and sustain forms of authority, disrupt modes of claiming legitimacy, and ultimately, purport to render the climate governable. Working across legal scholarship, international relations, as well as science and technology and critical data studies, we identify, describe, and analyse four functions of data in climate law and governance: meaning-making, orchestration, engagement, and transparency. Linking these functions to political programme (policy), structure (polity), and process (politics), we uncover the multiple ways in which data are not neutral or apolitical ‘inputs’ into climate law and governance. Rather, drawing on current examples from governance practice, we show how data shape what is to be governed, what it means to govern, how governance is done, and for whom…(More)”.