Conjuring a cooler world? Blockchains, imaginaries and the legitimacy of climate governance

Campbell-Verduyn, Malcolm Working Paper Conjuring a cooler world? Blockchains, imaginaries and the legitimacy of climate governance Global Cooperation Research Papers, No. 28 Provided in Cooperation with: University of Duisburg-Essen, Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21) Suggested Citation: Campbell-Verduyn, Malcolm (2021) : Conjuring a cooler world? Blockchains, imaginaries and the legitimacy of climate governance, Global Cooperation Research Papers, No. 28, University of Duisburg-Essen, Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21), Duisburg, https://doi.org/10.14282/2198-0411-GCRP-28 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/234739 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research A Central Research Institute of the University of Duisburg-Essen Global Cooperation Research Papers 28 Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn Conjuring a Cooler World? Blockchains, Imaginaries and the Legitimacy of Climate Governance Global Cooperation Research Papers are available online. To learn more about the Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research, please visit www.gcr21.org. DuEPublico All issues are permanently archived at the University of Duisburg-Essen’s open-access repository: http://duepublico.uni-duisburg- essen.de. Printed by UDZ, Duisburg © Duisburg 2021 Copyright is held by the contributing authors. ISSN: 2198-1949 (Print) ISSN: 2198-0411 (Online) DOI: 10.14282/2198-0411-GCRP-28 Editorial Board Katja Freistein Frank Gadinger Volker Heins Patricia Rinck Nina Schneider Christine Unrau Editorial Office Patricia Rinck Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21) Board of Directors Sigrid Quack Tobias Debiel Dirk Messner Jan Aart Scholte Executive Director Matthias Schuler Schifferstr. 44 47059 Duisburg Germany Tel: +49(0)203 379-5230 Fax: +49(0)203-379-5276 E-Mail: [email protected] Internet: www.gcr21.org A Central Research Institute of the University of Duisburg-Essen Licence: Creative Commons Attribution- NoDerivatives 4.0 Attribution Please cite the work as follows: Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (2021). Conjuring a Cooler World? Blockchains, Imaginaries and the Legitimacy of Climate Governance (Global Cooperation Research Papers 28). Duisburg: Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK / GCR21). doi: 10.14282/2198-0411-GCRP-28 Licence: CC BY-ND 4.0 No Derivative Works You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Notice For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page: www.gcr21.org/publications. Global Cooperation Research Papers 28 Conjuring a Cooler World? Blockchains, Imaginaries and the Legitimacy of Climate Governance Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn Table of Contents Editors Preface 1 Introduction: legitimacy crises and techno-financial fixes in climate governance ......................................................................... 3 2 Imaginaries: social, technical, political ............................................ 6 3 Imaginaries of climate governance .................................................. 8 4 Shared visions materializing in applications of blockchain technology .................................................................................... 11 5 Identifying and interrogating imaginaries of blockchain-based climate finance .............................................................................. 13 5.1 Widening market access, enhanced climate governance input? ............... 14 5.1.1 Climate tokens ................................................................................................... 15 5.1.2 Climate finance blockchain platforms ................................................................ 17 5.2 Market efficiencies, enhanced climate governance output? ..................... 19 5.2.1 Real-time accounting ......................................................................................... 19 5.2.2 Enhancing carbon credit efficiencies through (de-)centralization ........................ 21 5 Conclusion ................................................................................... 22 References ............................................................................................. 24 Abstract, about the author .................................................................... 34 Preface We are delighted to present a new Global Cooperation Research Paper on the highly topical issue of blockchain-based climate governance, entitled ‘Conjuring a Cooler World? Blockchains, Imaginaries and the Legitimacy of Climate Governance’. In his paper, Malcolm Campbell- Verduyn, assistant professor of International Political Economy at the University of Groningen and currently a senior research fellow at the Centre, critically examines the concept of blockchain-based climate governance projects, with a particular focus on the Climate Chain Coalition. This global initiative was founded in 2017 to advance blockchain-based financing for climate governance in order to help achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. The paper takes a closer look at the imaginaries and visions behind such climate finance experiments to find out whether there is more to these ‘cool’ new technologies – can blockchains address the lack of input and output legitimacy that global environmental governance has been suffering from for a while? Malcolm’s analysis comes to the important, yet sobering, conclusion that the imaginaries behind such experiments tend to be more interested in ‘cool’ technologies rather than an actually ‘cooler’ world in which climate governance is legitimised by improved opportunities for participation and better outputs in the form of reduced emissions. The research paper is recommended reading not only for those interested in a deeper understanding of blockchain technology, but for all researchers and practitioners interested in climate and global governance who want to take a critical look at the potential of such technology-centred solutions to the climate crisis. Patricia Rinck (Editorial Board) 3 Conjuring a Cooler World? Blockchains, Imaginaries and the Legitimacy of Climate Governance Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn1 1 Introduction: legitimacy crises and technofinancial fixes in climate governance Global environmental governance has long faced a legitimacy crisis (Bernstein 2005; 2012). On the input side, apex groupings of state and non-state actors coordinating attempts to address environmental problems have become increasingly inclusive. Yet, decision-making input tends to persistently privilege access of multinational firms and those actors best able to mobilize the necessary capital, time, expertise, and other resources. On the output side, longstanding forms of ‘marketized’ (Newell 2008; Paterson 2010; Gray 2017) and ‘non-state market driven’ (Cashore 2002) environmental governance suffer from frequently unmet outcomes. Most prominently, the goal of preventing a two degree Celsius rise in global temperature, set out by the 2015 Paris Agreement, is increasingly perceived as unachievable.2 Together, the problematic output and input legitimacy of global environmental governance have generated an ongoing search for alternative paths and mechanisms to enhance participation and meet shared goals. Alternatives have been emanated in ‘bottom-up’ fashion, for instance the growing movement for fossil fuel divestment. They have also been ‘top-down’, with associations of multinational firms developing a growing range of ‘responsible investment’ standards. This paper focuses on an increasingly prominent intersection of such mechanisms in international efforts to harness a novel set 1 Earlier versions of this paper benefited from feedback by participants in the December 2019 University of Warwick workshop ‘Exploring Technology-Led Private Experiments in ESG and Sustainable Governance’, the October 2020 Annual Political Science Workshops of the Low Countries, and the November 2020 research colloquium at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/ Centre for Global Cooperation Research. Insightful and constructive feedback from an anonymous peer reviewer, Dr. Umberto M. Sconfienza, Dr. Janet Hui Xue as well as research assistance by Peter C. Jager and Erwin Voloder are all gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are also due to Patricia Rinck for excellent editorial guidance. The usual disclaimers apply. 2 Even official UN Environmental Programme (2019) scenarios now view a 3.2 degree Celsius change by the year 2100 as far more realistic. 4 of technologies in responding to the climate governance’s legitimacy crisis. As part of a wider ‘technological turn’ in global sustainability governance, ‘multi-stakeholder’ groupings of public and private actors have increasingly turned to digital technologies to confront a range of global governance issues, including climate change (Bernards et al. 2020). The focus of this paper is on emerging efforts to harness one set of emergent technologies, called blockchains. What exactly ‘the blockchain’ is continually morphs. Generally, however, blockchains consist of ‘blocks’ of peer-verified digital transactions that are sequentially added together to form a ‘chain’ or ledger. Blockchains offer databases of digital transactions undertaken, verified, and published in quasianonymous networks of users. The novelty of this set of technologies lies in their ability to draw together geographically dispersed individuals into networks whose cryptographic and time-stamping technologies enable the secure undertaking, recording, and accounting for digital transactions. Applications of this technology have been prominently positioned as potentially improving a wide array of global problems. The intention of initial applications of blockchain to Bitcoin sought to reform global financial governance after the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. By evaluating efforts to re-purpose this carbon-intensive3 set of financial technologies (‘FinTechs’) as sustainability technologies (‘SusTechs’), this paper more generally provides insights into one set of efforts to materialize the Paris Agreement. In particular, it examines the aim of combatting climate change by making ‘finance flows consistent with a pathway toward low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development’ (UNFCCC n.d.). Meeting on the second anniversary of the Paris Agreement signing in 2017, the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat founded the Climate Chain Coalition (CCC) (UNFCCC 2018). Backed by a number of multi-stakeholder groups with names like the Climate Ledger Initiative and the Blockchain for Climate Foundation, the Ottawa-based CCC promotes the ‘blockchainization’ of the Paris Agreement. This multi-stakeholder grouping coordinates ongoing experiments with blockchains by and amongst large multinational corporations and start-up technology firms. In partnership and association4 with one another as well as universities, governments, and international organizations, these groups undertake a range of trials and ‘live’ applications of this technology in and across agricultural, energy, forestry, and other industries key to combating climate change. Through sub-groups focusing on ‘use cases’ in particular areas, CCC members share progress reports on achievements 3 See Stoll et al. (2019) and two main indexes: the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance n.d.) and Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index (Digiconomist n.d.). 4 Such as the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (n.d.), which is made up of national and regional associations of blockchain firms and backed by the European Commission. 5 of broadly set goals to curb the global temperature rise in what amounts to a largely private variation on the ‘experimentalist’ mode of governance that has spread across environmental and global governance (Hoffmann 2011; Brassett et al. 2012; De Búrca et al. 2014; Overdevest and Zeitlin 2020).5 The CCC’s Charter (2020a) outlines its purpose ‘to cooperatively support the application of distributed ledger technology (‘DLT’, including ‘the blockchain’) and related digital solutions to addressing climate change’. Despite not being explicitly invoked, legitimacy issues clearly underpin CCC goals. On the input side, the CCC is concerned with ‘empowering stakeholders’ and ‘stakeholder capacity building’. On the output side, the CCC seeks to generate ‘efficacy’ and ‘immediate actions by and for blockchain and related digital solutions that contribute to the achievement of this [global] transition [to a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy]’ (CCC 2020a). What kind of ‘cooler’ world do blockchain-based climate governance projects conjure? Examining White Papers6 of CCC members7 and the shared visions emerging8 across blockchain-based climate experiments, this paper interrogates these technology-centred responses to the legitimacy crisis of climate governance. While the ultimate impacts of the unfolding experiments coordinated by the CCC remain uncertain, evaluating how such projects seek to enhance the input and output legitimacy of climate governance is insightful not only for evaluating their prospects of success or failure, but for illuminating the possibilities that emergent digital technologies more generally provide in addressing the legitimacy crises of global environmental governance. The goal of this paper therefore is less to appraise the actual results of what remain ongoing experiments in a particular niche of global efforts to tackle climate change. Rather, it is to generate understanding into how and whether blockchains, as well as other emergent technologies, can—and should—be ‘scaled up’ or ‘scaled down’ to address the urgent issue of climate change. The insights generated here are therefore intended to be relevant not only to those interested in blockchain but also to researchers and practitioners of climate and global governance who are continually confronted with novel technologies as possible ‘silver bullet’ solutions to an urgent planetary crisis. The central argument is two-pronged. First, and at best, the ongoing ‘blockchainization’ of the Paris Agreement provides incremental improvements to 5 The precise nature of experimentalist governance varies regionally and sectorally (Ansell and Bartenberger 2016). 6 Originating as documents outlining government policy plans, White Papers have been re-purposed in the wider technology sector to form detailed descriptions of ‘new or improved technology in order to generate interest in—and promote sales of—that technology’ (Malone and Wright 2018: 114). While oriented more towards investors and professional technologists, they often wax lyrically about their philosophical influences and visions. 7 Many of whom are also involved in CCC (2020b) leadership. 8 As outlined in media reports and CCC-related bulletins that provide ‘status updates’ on the development of these projects (e.g. Shadrin 2020). 6 existing forms of market-led climate governance. The novel forms of individual participation and efficiencies these experiments promote are too limited to sufficiently address the input and output legitimacy gaps afflicting climate and environmental governance more generally. Second, at their worst these technological experiments divert from efforts to materialize competing visions of climate governance. The focus on technological silver bullets distracts from various ‘Green Deals’ and forms of ‘Green Keynesianism’ foregrounding collective rather than individual market-led responses to the legitimacy crises of global climate governance.9 In short, the world being conjured in blockchainbased climate finance experiments is one foregrounding ‘cool’ technological experimentation rather than a ‘cooler’ world in which climate governance is more legitimate through meeting emissions reductions targets and enhanced participation in decision-making. These arguments are elaborated over five sections. A first outlines the key concept of imaginaries harnessed from Science and Technology Studies to appraise the possibilities and limits offered by blockchain technology in climate governance on their own terms. Two subsequent sections then identify imaginaries in climate governance and blockchain applications, respectively, before a fourth section locates and interrogates the shared visions materializing across transnational efforts to ‘blockchainize’ the Paris Agreement. This penultimate section assesses whether blockchain-based climate FinTech and SusTech experiments materialize new imaginaries or reinforce existing visions of climate governance. A final section concludes by summarizing the promises and perils of advancing novel technologies such as blockchains as ‘technofixes’ to the fraught legitimacy of climate governance. It also identifies paths for future research at the intersection of imaginaries, climate governance, and technology. 2 Imaginaries: social, technical, political The imaginary is a frequently invoked yet infrequently elaborated concept. It is typically equated with fictional and immaterial ‘dream-like’ representations. Yet, imaginaries were also long understood as spaces mediating the ideational and the material (Graeber 2015). Drawing on the work of French-Greek philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, Cameron and Palan (2004: 86) generally understand imaginaries as ‘the medium through which everyday practices and problems are mediated and comprehended’. Imaginaries ‘render concrete’ individual visions, first, in being shared amongst collections of individuals and, second, by materializing as technical artefacts. An interdisciplinary literature 9 For useful overviews of these alternatives see for instance Pettifor (2019) and Tienhaara (2018). 13 eratives focused on social and environmental work’ in which ‘production is guided not by profit but by social and environmental priorities’ (DisCO.coop et al. 2019: 31–33). The visions shared across such projects explicitly prioritize sociability and ecological needs to varying extents. Yet, despite emerging attempts to apply the technology to international humanitarian actions and foreign aid projects (Reinsberg 2019; Zwitter and Boisse-Despiaux 2018), more collectivistic blockchain governance has not been able to ‘scale’ beyond local and niche applications. Not unlike climate governance, imaginaries of blockchain governance are extremes that, in practice, tend to materialize in ways that combine individualistic and collectivistic visions. Even ‘crypto-collaborativists’ projects undertake ‘public–private partnerships or coalitions that aim to collaboratively experiment with blockchain experiment with the existing political infrastructure as well as create new ones’ (Husain et al. 2020: 383). Faircoop, for example, is far from a ‘purely’ collaborative project. As Dallyn and Frenzel (2020) argue, Faircoop sits rather awkwardly in a continuum between the individualism of existing financial markets and efforts to materialize collaborative visions of governance. It is within evolving attempts to combine individualistic and collectivistic imaginaries in novel ways that efforts to ‘scale’ this emergent technology through its application to climate governance have emerged. The next section traces the largely reformist imaginaries of multi-stakeholder projects coordinated by the UN-backed CCC. 5 Identifying and interrogating imaginaries of blockchain-based climate finance This section identifies the combination of imaginaries conjured in blockchainbased climate finance projects coordinated by the CCC. It finds individualistic visions of climate governance to largely be materializing across blockchain projects. Elements of both reformist and radical collectivistic imaginaries are also present yet to far more limited extents. The shared emphasis is on linking spatially dispersed individual actions together in ways that engage neither with the more collectivistic forms of climate governance or blockchain governance outlined above. Instead, two individualistic elements predominate: a stress on 1) wider participation and input through enhanced individual market access as well as 2) improved output through greater market efficiencies. By identifying the ‘collective vision formation’ (Faustino 2019) across blockchain-based projects, this section extends a small but growing literature investigating climate governance projects harnessing this set of emergent technologies. Beyond promotional and technical feasibility studies (e.g. Marke et al. 2018; Franke et al. 2020; Schletz et al. 2020; Schultz and Feist 2020), three 14 contributions stand out here. First is Reinsberg’s (2020: 3) assessment of the potential of climate governance projects that are regarded as ‘rife with private-led initiatives using blockchain technology’ against a liberal ‘normative standard […] to judge blockchain-based global governance imaginaries’. This survey of emerging blockchain applications across sectors, including climate finance, finds the technology to have the ‘potential to instantiate decentralized governance platforms that implement liberal ideals of a “fully-automated liberalism” —whereby individual actors and the autonomous contracts that these actors create would work to achieve common objectives’ (Reinsberg 2020: 3). Second is Hull et al.’s (2020: 22) comparison of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the World Bank’s blockchain conceptualizations. This study finds that ‘far from transforming current modes of governance, it instead privileges and reinforces the currently dominant technocratic, market-friendly and procedural approach to multilateral climate governance’ (Hull et al. 2020: 22). Third is Schulz et al.’s (2020: 2) exploratory study of the CCC, which concludes that ‘more critical investigation regarding the possibilities and limitations of blockchain applications to support progress on sustainable development is warranted’. In particular, this study points to the need for interrogating ‘the cultural imaginaries’ invoked (Schulz et al. 2020: 9). In advancing these studies, this section not only identifies shared visions emerging across members of the CCC but provides an assessment of what is an ultimately limited potential for addressing the legitimacy crisis of climate governance. 5.1 Widening market access, enhanced climate governance input? Blockchain-enabled financial systems could potentially revolutionize capital access and unlock new investment potential thanks to the possibility of open and transparent access to markets. This can sustainably raise trillions of new sources, thanks to the ‘token economy’. (Agudelo 2019) A first major element of the shared individualistic vision materializing across blockchain climate finance projects is the effort to broaden input in climate governance through market-based participation. In their exploratory study, Schultz et al. (2020: 6) find the CCC’s key principle of fostering ‘stakeholder empowerment’ (CCC 2020a) to be ‘relatively vague’. They conclude that it ‘remains to be seen how the application of DLT will affect social cohesion and the targeted use of climate finance to reduce inequality’. This sub-section elaborates how the blockchain-based experiments coordinated by the CCC seek to enable more equal access by promoting individual participation in market- 15 based governance. In ‘opening the market to a wider investor base’ (Agudelo 2019), blockchain climate finance applications are conjured as ‘crowdfunding and peer-to-peer financial transactions in support of climate action’ (UNFCCC 2017). More specifically, they seek to enable individuals and actors beyond large transnational corporations and governments to participate in the allocation of climate credits and sustainable finance, first, through ‘climate tokens’ and, second, through ‘climate finance platforms’. This sub-section addresses each of these forms, in turn, before outlining some limits, taking a cue from Husain et al.’s (2020: 388, emphasis added) questioning of whether blockchain-based ‘systems are referring to individual empowerment or collective empowerment—and whether one necessarily translates into the other’. 5.1.1 Climate tokens Blockchain-based climate finance experiments materialize shared visions of individual market access in a first instance through so-called ‘green tokens’. These expand the vision of the initial cryptographic token, Bitcoin, to materialize a form of money and currency accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Like the original ‘cryptocurrency’, climate tokens link digital representations of a range of ‘green’ objects and activities to monetary-like reward schemes. The earliest such projects appeared around 201415 and created digital tokens representing renewable energy production. SolarCoin represents solar electricity generation while other projects ‘tokenize’ trees, like ECOCoin, or the planting of trees, like Carbon Coin (ECOCoin 2021). In these experiments, monetary-like rewards of new tokens are provided to incentivize individual participation in market-based climate action. The initial iterations of climate tokens have remained limited in scale to certain jurisdictions. SolarCoin, for instance, expanded to only four jurisdictions since its inception in 2014. Similarly, the United Nations Development Program-backed ‘climate cryptocurrency’ Cedar Coin incentivizes tree planting in only one country, Lebanon (Joe 2019).16 The real-world material limits of these digital ‘green’ tokens contrast with promises to ‘scale up’ enhanced participation in climate governance to anyone, anywhere in the world with access to the internet and a cryptocurrency wallet.17 The shared vision of access 15 Digital currencies claiming to be ‘linked to the environment’ like Ven rely on some of the technologies underpinning blockchains yet tend to eschew the ‘cryptocurrency’ label or any link to Bitcoin. 16 Whether or not these tokens are labelled as ‘currencies’ or ‘securities’ is usually a legal affair in the jurisdictions in which these are issued (Schletz et al. 2020). 17 Such wallets are types of bank accounts for storing and exchanging digital tokens. Several wallet providers have been linked to individual climate action. Stockholm Green Digital Finance (2021), a private not-for-profit consortium founded at the 2017 G20 GreenInvest meeting in Berlin, develops ‘green asset wallets’ that are intended to lower transaction costs of issuing and investing in climate credit products, carbon credits in particular. 16 seeking to ‘lower the barrier to entry’ for individual participation in markets for carbon credits (Green 2018) as well as other ‘green’ financial products and services is ultimately constrained to ‘opportunities’ for individual access by way of consumption and exchange of green tokens in certain national jurisdictions. A second, related, iteration of climate tokens is ‘native network tokens’. Rather than for exchange in monetary-like fashion between projects, these tokens are used internally within wider and ambitious, yet increasingly complex, blockchain-based networks. Where ‘green tokens’ are held and traded in digital wallets, ‘native network tokens’ remain ‘native’ to a plethora of climate finance projects. ClimateCoin (2017), for example, is a ‘stapling’ of carbon credits18 to the ‘CO2 tokens’ circulated and exchanged within this particular blockchain network. The ‘Unique Fungible Tokens’ of the Blockchain for Climate Foundation, a Canadian-based network promoting ‘international collaboration on climate change by connecting the national carbon accounts of the world’ (Pallant 2018), incentivize individual authentication of carbon credits. CarbonX, another ‘native network token’, provides incentives for ‘individuals to make carbon friendly decisions’ in a carbon trading network co-founded by consultancy ConsenSys and Canadian technology evangelists Don and Alex Tapscott (PRNewswire 2017). Similarly, CBNRtoken, developed by Hong Kong-based Veridium Labs (n.d.), ‘represents a single REDD+ carbon credit backed by a diversified portfolio of internationally verified carbon credits’. 1PL, the 1PLANET native network token, is conjured as a ‘digital eco-commodity that represents reductions in CO2 emissions’, or carbon credits exchangeable in a blockchain network that ‘democratizes access to global carbon markets by tokenizing carbon credits’ (Climate Futures n.d.). California-based GEAR, an abbreviation for ‘Green Energy and Renewables’, provides a blockchain-based ‘marketplace’ whose GEAR Tokens represent carbon credits (Global Newswire 2019). Climate tokens materialize an individualistic vision of enhanced participation in climate governance through carbon and other ‘green’ markets. By ‘opening up’ existing markets for financial products, individual participation in climate governance decision-making is sought. As Faustino (2019: 487) argues, however, this ‘futuristic worldview according to which a user can shape her organization’s governance architecture in a modular way, launch her own currency, and exert full control over her own personalized algorithms cannot be attained without the technical infrastructures that support it’. To explore the wider, more collectivistic infrastructures that individualistic blockchain-based climate finance projects attempt to generate, the next sub-section examines climate finance automation platforms. 18 Worth noting is that carbon credits themselves are representations of a metric ton of carbon dioxide. 17 5.1.2 Climate finance blockchain platforms Individual access to market-based climate governance also materializes in and across blockchain-based digital platforms seeking to develop open and automated infrastructures of climate finance. Distinguishing such platforms from other so-called ‘climate smart’ technologies,19 is their layering of blockchainbased ‘smart contracts’20 in ‘automating’ credit provision to ‘help make climate finance market more inclusive’, as boasted by a leading project called the DAO IPCI (2018b). The vision shared in this and related projects is one in which blockchain applications enable participation of individuals and individual countries in overcoming ‘the stringent accreditation requirements for international climate funds’ (DAO IPCI 2018b). The Russia-based DAO ICPI, or ‘Integral Platform for Climate Initiatives’, specifically seeks to ‘help developing countries to access climate finance’ by actualizing the right-to- development criteria spelled out in article 10.5 of the Paris Agreement (UNFCCC 2015). Projects like the now bankrupt Israel-based Solar DAO also sought to facilitate and channel individual investments into funds that would automatically allocate investments towards solar energy projects.21 The assets that blockchain climate finance applications seek to broaden access to through automated ‘Do it Yourself’ digital platforms are financial instruments that have, to date, remained largely ‘exotic’ to individual investors (HSBC and Sustainable Digital Finance Alliance 2019). The Singapore-based Carbon Grid Protocol, for example, seeks to enable ‘the widespread adoption of carbon credits in blockchain as a valuable and readily tradeable asset class’ (Carbon Grid Protocol n.d.). In ‘connecting carbon to life’, another Singapore start-up called Poseidon seeks to spur individual actions, through its blockchain-based climate finance platform, to allow individual to ‘be able topersonallyoffset’ their carbon footprints (Del Castillo 2018). Blockchain-based climate platforms also provide ‘climate services’ enabling geographically dispersed individuals and individual firms to create their own financial assets. The Carbon Credit Management Platform, developed in a partnership between IBM and the China-based Energy-Blockchain Labs, seeks to ‘enable companies to create carbon assets more efficiently’ (Lielacher 2017). The platform Greeneum (n.d.), meanwhile, enables individuals to develop Decentralized Applications (DApps) that provide ‘incentives to use renewable energy and reduce carbon emission’. UK-based Fasset (n.d.) Enterprise Platform is conjured as a ‘marketplace’ for owners of renewable energy and other sustainable infrastructure owners to ‘tokenize’ their assets in raising ‘climate capital’ while allowing individual investors ‘to contribute to the 19 See for instance the Journal of Peasant Studies 45 (1) forum on ‘Climate Smart Agriculture’. 20 Blockchain-based contracts in which the terms and execution are pre-recorded and automatically undertaken. 21 This project was taken over by Texan oil & gas firm in 2019 (Burger 2018). 18 achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’. Finally, Adaptation Ledger, established by the founder and co-chairof the CCC,22 is a platform that creates clear incentives for developing standards (defined broadly) for climate adaptation to organize the essential tools (technologies, practice, metrics, exchange mechanisms and finance, in other words, ‘climate services’) required to support effective global action on climate adaptation… [by enabling users to undertake] the applied creation of a suite of tools and testbedsto better align adaptation solutions and mobilize adaptation finance. (Adaption Ledger n.d.) Despite their attempts to broaden individual participation in climate governance, these blockchain-based platforms tend to extend only very limited forms of input. The ability to access and decide who receives funds in these automated platforms, paradoxically, does not automatically enable participation in the development of the rules structuring the allocation of sustainable finance. The actual manners in which these platforms operate, the rules upon which they are based, and the credit decisions they structure may be transparent. Yet, their very complexity undermines rather than encourages participation. This is due to the level of technical knowledge required to navigate these fast-moving technological projects. The promise to herald more inclusive, bottom-up, and market-based participation in blockchain-based climate governance is dulled by technological experiments that largely reinforce existing imbalances in access. For instance, in these projects, individuals are rarely provided straightforward possibilities for shaping the code that structures credit decision-making. Rather, the underlying protocols typically remain controlled by concentrated cliques of ‘insider’ decision-makers.23 Paradoxically then, attempts to widen input through blockchain-based market participation increase, rather than overcome, existing limits on decision-mak- ing power in climate governance. These technology-centred projects distract from possibilities of integrating wider input through collectivistic imaginaries. They are also entangled in a second element of shared individualistic visions materializing in climate finance experiments with this set of technologies. 22 Tom Baumann also co-chairs International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications’ Climate Action Working Group efforts to develop ‘data and digital innovation infrastructure to enhance climate actions’ (INATBA n.d.). 23 Exceptions here are the ‘open climate collabathons’ co-organized by Yale OpenLab. These are ‘designed to leverage collective intelligence to accomplish multiple challenges of a shared goal together’. Their objective is developing ‘a platform for contractual automation of rules and mechanisms with financial nature’. Yet even here individual prizes for ‘Most innovative contribution’ and ‘most effective hack’ are incentivized through rewards that include quasi-monetary options, like receiving $700 worth of carbon offsets when achieving ‘technical bounties’ like enhancing carbon pricing automationthrough ‘a smart contract that can automate the calculation and collection of a global carbon price based on provable GHG emissions’(Open Climate Collabathon 2020). 19 5.2 Market efficiencies, enhanced climate governance output? We continue moving towards a society that seeks to digitize all sorts of interactions, building a parallel digital world next to our analog reality. That is why establishing a system that can improve the efficiency of our transactions while lowering our environmental footprint is key.This is another planet: the digital one. Our planet B is Blockchain and must lead to a better one. (Agudelo 2019, bold in original) Blockchain-based climate finance applications seek to improve the output legitimacy of market-based climate governance by enhancing efficiencies in offering better accounting of ‘green’ bonds, carbon offsets, and other financial products. This subsection details and interrogates the stress on enhanced output, first, through ‘real-time accounting’ and second via ‘decentralized solutions’. 5.2.1 Real-time accounting ‘Trading CO2 reductions’, hazards the Director of Climate Change at the World Bank, ‘may be much more efficient while using distributed ledger technologies’ (James Close quoted in DAO IPCI 2018b).Blockchain-based ‘[p] eer-to-peer trading of natural resources or permits’, like water extraction and timber production, can also improve efficiency according to the World Economic Forum (2018).24 As it ‘acts as a shared record, the change of ownership is easily recorded, and there’s no need for reconciliation between parties’ in ‘post-trade’ settlement, argues the global bank HSBC (Ledger Insights 2020). Blockchain applications in climate finance are conjured as more efficient ‘impact reporting’ that enables investors to more precisely account for their ‘ethical investments’ (see Dimmelmeier 2019). As the founder of ‘public benefit corporation’ Oliver Russell puts it, blockchain applications in climate finance can better ‘authenticate a richer, more accurate global ledger of a company’s actual social and environmental performance, providing society with a more realistic assessment of its impact’ (Stoddard 2018). These visions materialize in a flurry of partnerships between blockchain technology start-ups. For instance, Provenance and Climate Analytics provide ‘carbon transparency’ services measuring GHG emissions across global supply chains (Manivannan 2019; see also Bernards et al. n.d.). Similarly, Cayman Islands-based start-up Allinfra and Big Four accounting firm KPMG have a ‘verifiable trail of emissions and offsets records on blockchain’ (PRNewswire 2020). So-called ‘Proof of Impact’ protocols are developed by South Africa- 24 Through its Mining and Metals Blockchain Initiative the WEF is also tracing carbon emissions of a half dozen MNCs (Partz 2020). 20 based Ixo Foundation in which users of its Global Impact Ledger are rewarded for authenticating impact claims (Braden 2019). Elsewhere, blockchain-based climate accounting solutions introduced by Singapore-based start-up Poseidon (n.d.) are marketed as being able ‘for the first time in history, to precisely address the environmental cost of any transaction’. Most ambitiously yet, the Regen Ledger provides a ‘Balance Sheet for Earth’ (Booman et al. 2020: 7). Automation is once again core to the efficiency claims underpinning these projects. The EcoSmart-Protocol developed by Veridium Labs automates complex calculations of corporate environmental impacts to produce the ‘correct’ number of carbon offsets required to achieve net carbon neutrality (Orcutt 2018). A director at a Morocco-based climate finance advisory and investment firmexclaims that ‘blockchain can track compliance with treaties and automatically release incentives, such as tax credits, once certain targets are met’ (Carter 2018). A joint report by the British bank HSBC and the Sustainable Digital Finance Alliance (2019)25 entitled ‘Widening Access to Finance Block by Block’, argues that blockchain applications increase ‘accessibility to issuance’ of green bonds by automating and decentralizing what has been a concentrated and inefficient human-centred practice. What this ‘real-time’ automation then enables is said to be ‘the accuracy of impact measurement, efficiency of portfolio management and profitability of investments’, as Russian-based Evercity puts it (Shadrin 2020). Materializing across these globally dispersed projects is a shared vision of blockchain technology as enhancing ‘the ability to explicitly track the ecological impacts of our actions right alongside the financial’ (Booman et al. 2020: 7). This is a vision of enhanced efficiency in climate governance materializing through better measurement of what the business magazine Forbes exclaims as ‘the entire process of accounting for a company’s carbon emission and offsetting that pollution’ (Del Castillo 2018). Yet, this improved accuracy of measurement is once again assumed to automatically lead existing market-based governance processes to improve outcomes. Little thought is given to how speculation and more unproductive financial trading might also be enhanced along with GHG emissions reductions. The emphasis on efficiencies, for instance, provides little-to-no consideration of the Jevons paradox, which describes how efficiency gains through technologies may end up increasing the very emissions of GHGs as well as worsen outcomes and the legitimacy of climate governance.26 Generating a 25 A partnership coordinated by the UN Environmental Programme and China’s ANT Financial Services Group (Sustainable Digital Finance Alliance 2021). 26 Newel (2019: 83) elaborates the paradox that ‘while efficiencies can be made, resource throughputs reduced, and production, technology and finance undoubtedly mobilised towards greener ends, the direction of travel, as captured in trends towards the overshoot of planetary boundaries suggest not only that the pace and depth of change is not fast enough but that these shifts fail to deal with the basic contradictions of the fantasy of infinite growth on afinite planet.’ 21 potentially larger pool of funds is far from being the main problem of climate finance: however, the distribution of such funds is a topic left to the very markets that have heralded inequities and inaccuracies in the first place. Such paradoxes and limits are also apparent in the further emphasis on achieving efficiencies through disintermediation in climate governance. 5.2.2 Enhancing carbon credit efficiencies through (de-)centralization Equally, characterizing individualistic visions of blockchain-based climate finance is a stress on bypassing collective, centralized authorities. The search for decentralization in Bitcoin’s initial proposal to circumvent banks and central banks is echoed in efforts to ‘disrupt’ existing market-led climate governance in which ‘financiers act as intermediaries between buyers and sellers of carbon allowances […], making carbon markets operate much like any standard financial market’ in which the likes of auditors and accountants serve as third parties (Katz-Rosene and Paterson 2018: 97). The blockchain platform of Singapore-based New Era Energy, for example, seeks ‘to open up carbon credit markets by making them more transparent and accountable, while removing the need for intermediaries such as brokers or funds’ (Deign 2018, emphasis added). Similar projects conjure blockchain applications as enhancing the efficiency of climate finance governance by getting ‘beyond the self-interest of management and company-paid consultants’ (Stoddard 2018). Removing the need for these and other ‘third-parties’ is regarded as beneficial to governance output in reducing ‘costs involved in verifying transactions’ (Climate Trade n.d.). As with other novel attempts at decentralization throughout history (Schneider 2019), however, the emphasis on efficiency through disintermediation tends to re-intermediate rather than eliminate centralized authority. Blockchain projects, linking individual action together to produce a form of global ‘climate collectivism’, construct new intermediaries in their connection-mak- ing and attempts at ‘building linkages across markets’ as the aforementioned DAO IPCI (n.d.: 4) puts it. Projects like the Estonian blockchain Earth Ledger simultaneously advertise that ‘Anyone Can Participate’ in a ‘positive social and environmental impact platform’ and ‘Grow a Sustainable Start-up’ yet only ‘incentivizes verified users to work together towards the restoration of our Planet’ (Earth Ledger n.d.). The Carbon Grid Protocol (2018: 8) developed by Singapore’s New Era Energy and supported by both the CCC and the UNFCCC, meanwhile, conjures a ‘Proof-of-Green’ consensus model that empowers ‘Carbon Grid Authority Nodes’ as ‘independent and accredited validators that have previous experience in CDM or VCS-related protocols, or exhibit, host, or carry out green or renewable energy-related projects, events, or initiatives’. These nodes grant users access to what is billed as its ‘digital gateway to green projects & DApps’. Similarly, in the DAO IPCI (n.d.), ‘Op- 22 erators’ of climate finance applications are granted control over the following: ‘Approval of new Ledgers and issuance of independently assured Units in the amount within the established limit; Approval of New Issuer’s access to trading (Marketplace); Approval of the Accredited Auditors List’. Not only do these attempts at decentralization create new intermediaries, but they also persistently include a number of existing, centralized authorities. For instance, private-sector initiatives advanced by the Blockchain Climate Institute (n.d.) provide ‘a “super-connector” platform for policymakers, corporate executives and blockchain innovators to experiment and adopt the most viable concepts in an enabling environment’.27 Rather than jettisoning the ‘old governors’, blockchain-based climate finance platforms mix them with ‘new governors’ in extending the complexity of climate governance assemblages. The extension of such complexity is illustrated at official events of UNFCCC’s Conference of the Parties where events like the ‘Decentralized Integrity: Climate Finance and Carbon Markets’ showcased a ‘live launch’ of climate finance applications on the DAO IPCI for green NGOs and the Director forClimateChange at the World Bank (DAO IPCI 2018a; 2018b). This mix of ‘old and new governors’ materializing in blockchain-based climate governance projects may very well enable GHG emissions reductions and improve its problematic output. However, important tensions underpin their individualistic imaginaries. An emphasis on achieving efficiencies through decentralization that recreates centralization and ‘real-time accounting’ that potentially enables financial speculation appears unlikely to improve rapid GHG emission reductions. Future research will be needed to trace attempts at either resolving these tensions or limiting their implications for whether technological solutions can address the legitimacy gaps in climate governance. 5 Conclusion This paper advanced two central arguments. First, it argued that individualistic visions are shared and materialize across emerging blockchain-based climate finance projects. Second, the ability of these persistently market-based projects to address the problems facing climate governance was interrogated. The ability of blockchain-based climate finance experiments to enhance both the input and output of climate governance through an emphasis on individual access and efficiencies in markets remain, at best, unlikely and, at worst, a distraction for collectivistic imaginaries for addressing the collective problem of climate governance. 27 The founder of the organization that later became the Blockchain & Climate Institute edited a book promoting the blockchainization of nearly every aspect of climate finance and its governance (Marke et al. 2018). 29 (eds),Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1–33. 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What kind of ‘cooler’ world do blockchain-based climate governance projects conjure? This paper scrutinizes the shared visions materializing across climate finance experiments, locating them largely within existing individualistic imaginaries rather than more collectivistic alternatives. It finds the imaginaries of ‘cool’ technological experimentation to fall short in materializing broader input and more effective output required to overcome the legitimacy crisis facing market-led climate governance. Key words: Blockchain, Technology, Finance, Governance, Legitimacy Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn is senior research fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and assistant professor in International Political Economy at the University of Groningen. He researches the on-going and varying implications of big data and blockchain technologies at the intersections of global environmental, financial and security governance. 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Blockchains, Imaginaries and the Legitimacy of Climate Governance All inhouse publications of the Centre are ready for download from the Centre’s website. www.gcr21.org www.gcr21.org Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21) Schifferstr. 44 47059 Duisburg Germany Dieser Text wird via DuEPublico, dem Dokumenten- und Publikationsserver der Universität Duisburg-Essen, zur Verfügung gestellt. Die hier veröffentlichte Version der E-Publikation kann von einer eventuell ebenfalls veröffentlichten Verlagsversion abweichen. DOI: URN: 10.14282/2198-0411-GCRP-28 urn:nbn:de:hbz:464-20210526-115112-2 Dieses Werk kann unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung - Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 Lizenz (CC BY-ND 4.0) genutzt werden.