Coproduction through Experimentation: Interconnecting mediating instruments and linking climate change with the financial sector

This paper analyses how several mediating instruments (Miller and O’Leary 2007) were interconnected and started to link abstract aspirations for tackling climate change to investment and lending decisions across the financial sector. In doing so it investigates how a new form of carbon accounting emerged and began to attain a temporary degree of stability (cf. Power 2015). It further argues that applications of the mediating instruments framework have offered little insight into stabilisation processes, other than entailing the coproduction of components and practices. This paper seeks to offer a partial remedy by studying coproduction through processes of ‘experimentation’ (Hacking 1983; Gooding 1985). This uncovers the obstacles, detours and false starts that provoke and guide the gradual and tumultuous formation of a working ensemble. The paper combines documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews and participant observation, focusing on three interconnected sites of experimentation: intergovernmental talks on climate targets, the intersection of climate change and finance, and a United Nations and Greenhouse Gas Protocol standard-setting project.