Creating climate transparency through innovative digital technologies

There is an increasing call to hold climate actors accountable. Despite growing attention, current climate accounting systems are not up to the task and face systematic limitations. In this session, we discuss an innovative climate accounting architecture to harmonize data across various governance and actor levels and to digitally integrate the fragmented legacy accounting systems to reduce information asymmetry and prevent double-counting.

We outline a nested accounting system that improves interoperability and decentralized cooperation among the diverse Paris Agreement actors using several innovative digital technologies, such as Distributed Ledger Technology, Internet of Things, Machine Learning, as well as concepts like verifiable credentials and decentralized identifiers. Such an architecture is particularly relevant for improving inclusiveness in climate markets by lowering the participation burden or accounting. It can also enhance capacity building and technology transfer to the Global South that can lead to leapfrogging into innovative systems designs.

To reflect the actor diversity, we are co-creating this nested accounting architecture jointly with the Climate Action Data 2.0 community, a working group of more than 60 climate data expert organizations. In this session, we seek to present our progress and seek to engage with the wider climate innovation community.