Over the past decade, subnational governments have placed climate ambition firmly on both global and local agendas through increasingly ambitious commitments and targets. But the challenge facing climate action has now shifted. 

Today, only 37% of subnational governments are on track to meet their emissions reduction targets, and collectively they must triple their current annual rate of emissions reductions to align with a 1.5°C pathway. The question is no longer whether ambition exists, but how to translate it into implementation at speed and scale.

That challenge is increasingly shaping global climate discussions. 

During London Climate Action Week, the Under2 Coalition will join Climate Disclosure Project (CDP) and Climate Group for a roundtable on “Leveraging Disclosure Data and AI to Accelerate Adaptation and Resilience Investments.” The session, which will launch CDP’s new AI-powered Adaptation & Action Explorer tool developed in collaboration with Google, reflects a broader shift underway across the climate community: recognising data not simply as a reporting requirement, but as critical infrastructure for delivery, investment and resilience planning.

Implementation requires investment

And investment requires evidence: data that helps governments understand barriers, direct resources, unlock finance and accelerate action. This is the pivot now underway across the Under2 Coalition. We are evolving our approach to evidence and insights to support implementation and investment for states and regions across the Coalition.

The implementation gap is also a data gap. Subnational governments are responsible for up to 70% of climate mitigation actions and more than 90% of climate adaptation actions, yet they receive less than 17% of international climate finance. Despite growing recognition of their role, the evidence needed to direct support and finance remains incomplete. In a sample of G20 countries, fewer than 40% of subnational actors with greenhouse gas reduction targets had reported sufficient emissions inventory data to assess progress against those targets.

Without stronger data on where progress is being made, where barriers persist and where finance is most needed, it becomes significantly harder to design effective support or build credible investment pathways. Better evidence is not only about measuring progress; it is about enabling delivery.

The Under2 Coalition’s new approach to evidence and insights is designed to help close that gap. It combines a strengthened reporting architecture through CDP annual disclosure, still one of the leading global mechanisms for demonstrating climate action, with new tools that better capture the realities of implementation.

Tracking subnational action 

The Under2 Pulse, launching in early 2027 to replace the Under2 Ambition Tracker, will provide coalition-specific insights on finance needs, policy innovation, subnational context and barriers to delivery. Alongside this, we are deepening partnerships across the wider climate data ecosystem. Through engagement with the CAMDA community, we are contributing to a growing body of evidence demonstrating the influence and impact of subnational climate action. Through these collaborations, we are also helping strengthen the global evidence base on subnational climate policies and laws, creating new opportunities for visibility, peer learning, knowledge sharing and replication across governments.

At a moment when climate ambition must rapidly translate into implementation, data has become more than a measurement tool. It is increasingly the foundation for credible delivery, stronger resilience and investable climate action.