CoAct Database

Cooperative climate initiatives play a key role in the transnational climate regime. Cooperative climate initiatives are collaborative efforts in which multiple actors, such as governments, cities, businesses, civil society organizations, and international bodies, work together to advance climate action across borders and sectors. Recent studies have shown their enormous potential in supporting the goals of the Paris Agreement. At the same time, research highlights the need for robust institutional design, strong capacity, and transparency.

The CoAct Database is a platform that captures a decade of climate action by cooperative climate initiatives. For each initiative, CoAct tracks core characteristics including its goals and activities, governance and institutional design, participating actors, and key thematic linkages. These linkages include connections to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and priorities highlighted through the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement.

Within the CoAct Database sample of cooperative climate initiatives, ‘integrated nature–climate action’ (INCA) initiatives are captured as a dedicated subset. INCA initiatives combine climate mitigation and/or adaptation with explicit aims to protect, restore, or improve nature, supporting synergies between climate and biodiversity outcomes. In the CoAct Database, the INCA subset highlights initiatives that align climate action with priorities relevant to implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and related nature goals.

The website currently presents selected subsets of the full CoAct Database, including initiatives featured on the Non-State Actor Zone for Climate Action (NAZCA), a tracking platform administered by the UN Climate secretariat, and initiatives launched at recent UN climate conferences (COPs). The selection and the range of initiatives presented on this platform will expand over time.

In addition to descriptive information, the database places particular emphasis on tracking elements that help assess how initiatives function and evolve in practice, including their effectiveness, accountability arrangements, inclusiveness, and capacity. Read more on our methodology here.

What does the CoAct Database track?

The CoAct Database collects information on cooperative climate initiatives across several core categories. These include basic initiative characteristics and governance arrangements; actor participation (including funders, lead partners, and participating organizations); targets and plans; stated functions; geographies of implementation; and annual outputs over time.

Based on the coded data, CoAct derives a set of indicators that support comparison and analysis across initiatives. Output effectiveness is assessed annually using the Function–Output Fit (FOF) approach, which captures how well an initiative’s observed outputs align with its stated functions over time. Accountability and inclusiveness are assessed through indices built from multiple governance- and participation-related indicators, while delivery capacity is captured through capacity-related indicators (such as organizational resourcing signals) and longitudinal evidence of sustained output activity. Read more on our methodology here.

In addition, CoAct records policy linkages to major international agendas, including linkages to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), priorities highlighted through the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement, and potential contributions to implementing the Global Biodiversity Framework, including through the integrated nature–climate action (INCA) subset.

Suggested citation

Chan, S., Reyes de la Lanza, S., van den Wall Bake, K., Hagenström, P., Glass, L. M., Fast, C., Hale, T., & Imbach, P. (2025). CoAct Database [Data set]. Radboud University; German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS); Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford; Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE).