CEENRG Seminars: 'Who Evaluates State Climate Performance? The Politics of Evaluative Authority Beyond the Paris Agreement'

Speaker: Sanae Youbi (PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, Université Libre de Bruxelles)

Abstract: Who checks whether states are individually doing enough on climate? The Paris Agreement does not. External initiatives are filling the gap — rating, ranking, recalculating — but we know little about how they build evaluative authority. Examining these initiatives against their own methodologies, I find that all of them depend, at some point in their chain, on data the reporting system produces. While emissions can be measured independently with satellites, ambition, adaptation, and finance cannot. There, external evaluation starts from what states choose to disclose.

The Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy, and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG) is hosting a seminar series throughout the 2026-27 academic year.

Many seminars take place as hybrid meetings (in person seminars in the DAB - David Attenborough Building + online in Zoom) every Thursday (please check precise date and time as may vary) during the term. Please refer to the Land Economy website for more details and online registration.