Almost every new nationally determined contribution now says something about law and institutions: which ministry leads, how progress will be measured, what capacity is missing, and who, if anyone, checks the figures. New scoping research from the Climate Law and Governance Initiative finds that at least 137 of the 144 NDC 3.0 submissions analysed contain legal, institutional or governance commitments of some kind.1 The more demanding question, ahead of UNFCCC COP31 in Antalya, is what those provisions are worth in practice: whether they are resourced, verifiable and open to public scrutiny, and what follows in law when they are not.
NDCs 3.0 are much more than numbers… they are plans, and increasingly, rules.
Public attention to nationally determined contributions concentrates on the headline figure. A percentage, a base year, a target date. Yet under Article 4 of the Paris Agreement a Party undertakes not only to prepare and communicate successive contributions, recorded in the NDC registry maintained by the secretariat, but also to pursue domestic mitigation measures with the aim of achieving them. It is in that second undertaking that the law sits. Targets are announced in a week; the statutes, mandates, budget lines and reporting systems that give them effect are what determine whether a target survives a change of government, a fiscal contraction, a contested permit or a legal challenge.
This is why the governance content of an NDC repays close reading. A commitment that names the lead institution, establishes a measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) system, sets a review cycle and identifies the capacity required to run it is a different legal object from a commitment that states a number alone. The 2025 NDC synthesis report records what Parties have pledged. The governance provisions record how they propose to keep the pledge, and how anyone else would know whether they had.
Why the governance content is now a legal question
Until recently these provisions were often treated as good administrative practice rather than as a matter of international obligation. That reading is no longer available. In its advisory opinion of 23 July 2025 on the obligations of States in respect of climate change, the International Court of Justice held that the discretion of Parties in preparing their NDCs is not unlimited, and that the preparation of contributions is governed by a stringent standard of due diligence, each Party being required to do its utmost to ensure that what it puts forward represents its highest possible ambition. The Court also confirmed that the obligation extends past the moment of submission to the implementation of domestic measures, including effective regulation of private actors, and reaffirmed the customary duty to cooperate in good faith, informed by the principle of sustainable development.
The consequence for the documents themselves is direct. If diligence is assessed by whether a State has used the means reasonably available to it, then the institutional arrangements a State has put in place, or declined to put in place, become part of the evidence. A designated lead institution, a functioning MRV system, a statutory review cycle and an independent body able to examine the figures are no longer presentational detail. They are the observable traces of a State doing its utmost, and their absence is equally observable.
What NDCs actually contribute, legally, to the global response to climate change
Against that background, the CLGI scoping analysis finds that governance language has become close to universal in the NDC form. At least 137 of 144 NDC 3.0 submissions analysed include legal, institutional or governance provisions. Widening the dataset to include NDCs from earlier cycles that remain in force, the figure rises to 177 of 192.
A base rate that high is worth pausing on, in both directions. It shows that Parties have absorbed, quickly and almost without exception, the idea that a contribution must explain itself institutionally. It does not show that the provisions are strong, funded or enforceable. Presence is not quality, and a single count of “has governance content” would flatten precisely the differences that matter.
The differences are considerable. Variation is notable across the indicators examined, which include MRV systems, designation of a lead institution, capacity-building commitments and independent oversight mechanisms. These indicators do not move together. A Party may name the responsible ministry with precision while saying nothing about who verifies its reporting; another may describe a detailed measurement architecture without identifying the resources to operate it. Reading the dataset indicator by indicator, rather than as an aggregate score, is what makes it useful to anyone drafting, advising on or reviewing a contribution.
Differentiation, capacity, and what the Annex I split does not mean
Variation is also notable between Annex I and Non-Annex I Parties. That finding invites a careless reading, and the careless reading should be resisted. It is not a ranking of seriousness.
Independent oversight bodies, continuous MRV systems and technically staffed review processes are expensive and slow to build. The Paris Agreement itself anticipates this: the enhanced transparency framework under Article 13 is constructed with built-in flexibility for Parties whose capacities differ, and Article 13 is accompanied by standing obligations to provide developing country Parties with support, including support for building transparency-related capacity on a continuous basis. Where the analysis finds thinner institutional provision, the question raised is therefore one of support, sequencing and technical cooperation, rather than of reproach. Capacity-building commitments recorded in NDCs are, on this reading, not the soft part of the document. They are a statement of what is needed to make the rest of it operable, and a test of whether that need is being met.
Democratic governance, access rights and the information environment
Institutional design also determines who can see what a government is doing and contest it. Access to environmental information, public participation in decisions and access to justice are the mechanisms through which stated commitments acquire domestic constituencies and domestic consequences, and they are protected by treaty in several regions, including under the Escazú Agreement in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Aarhus Convention in Europe and Central Asia. Rights-based approaches to NDC implementation are, in this sense, accountability infrastructure rather than an additional layer of principle.
Climate disinformation belongs to the same discussion. Deliberate distortion of the evidential record is not only a communications problem; it degrades the informational basis on which participation, oversight and judicial review all depend. The institutional features that make an MRV system credible, independent verification, published data, technical review and a route to challenge, are also the features that make distortion harder to sustain. Due diligence obligations on States and on companies, and the growing body of litigation testing whether public and private actors have acted consistently with their stated commitments, work in the same direction. Related expert perspectives on these developments are gathered in CLGI’s earlier discussion, From Bonn to COP31.
Bringing adaptation into the frame
Mitigation contributions are not the only place where governance commitments live. A great deal of the institutional architecture for adaptation sits instead in National Adaptation Plans, submitted through NAP Central, where questions of lead institution, monitoring, subnational coordination and financing arise in much the same form. Analysing NDCs in isolation risks recording a governance gap that is in fact filled elsewhere in a country’s framework, or missing a duplication that wastes scarce administrative capacity. The definitive findings of the scoping project, together with an expanded analysis incorporating NAPs, will be presented ahead of COP31.
From Bonn to Antalya
None of this suggests that attention should shift away from negotiation towards implementation, as though the two were alternatives. New instruments will be required as the world changes and new challenges emerge, alongside the continual inter-actional reform of existing regimes. What the findings do suggest is that particular emphasis is now warranted on implementation, compliance and dispute settlement, so that States can cooperate more effectively under the commitments they have already made, and so that the next round of instruments is built on an accurate picture of what the current ones are actually doing.
The practical agenda that follows is fairly concrete. It includes helping Parties translate NDC governance provisions into domestic legislation and institutional mandates; directing capacity-building and transparency support to the indicators where provision is thinnest; strengthening independent oversight so that reported progress can be tested; and connecting access rights, corporate due diligence and litigation to the transparency architecture rather than leaving them to develop separately.
These are among the questions that Climate Law and Governance Day 2026 will take up on Friday, 13 November 2026, alongside COP31 in Antalya, building on Climate Law and Governance Day 2025 in Belém, which considered the Paris Agreement at ten under the theme of climate courage, contributions and compliance.
Recommended resources
Climate Law and Governance Day 2026 will take place on Friday 13 November 2026, in person in Antalya alongside COP31, with an online component. It will bring together legal and policy experts, judges, negotiators, academics and practitioners to examine how climate law and governance can turn NDC 3.0 commitments into delivery, across four themes: operationalising the Paris Agreement, scaling up national ambition through law and governance, advancing climate justice, and deploying legal instruments for decarbonisation finance and trade. Find out more and register to participate here. Governments, institutions and civil society organisations interested in partnering with or sponsoring the event can contact the CLGI Secretariat at climatelawgovernance@cisdl.org.
Further reading and tools are collected in the CLGI Knowledge Center, including the Law and Climate Change Hub, the Climate Law Knowledge Tools and the Climate Law and Governance Blog. Details of the Climate Law and Governance Specialisation Course, the Live from Bonn roundtable series and the initiative’spartner network are also available, and CLGI is convened together with the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law.
Acknowledgments
Warm thanks are due to all who chaired, spoke and contributed their insights across both sessions: Prof Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Lilian de Leon, Dr Tejas Rao, Dr Jellie Molino and Adv Railla Puno; moderators Calum Steer, Niklas Todt and Alexia Vassiliou; and speakers and intervenors including Dr Lara Lázaro Touza, Aishwarya Machani, Adv Hafij Khan, Shamim Arfeen, Dr Döne Yalçın, Adv Ayman Cherkaoui, Dr Wendy Miles KC, Marie-Claire Graf, Veena Balakrishnan, Adv Lucia Williams, Dr Antoinette Nestor, Adv Matthew Carvalho, Dr Monserrat Madariaga, Prof Markus Gehring and Prof Alessandra Lehmen. This post draws on two CLGI/CISDL sessions held during SB64 in Bonn. “Live from Bonn,” an online roundtable held on 15 June, was co-hosted by CLGI, CISDL, the Centre for Climate Justice of Bangladesh, and international partners including the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics, ABU Antalya, the University of Caxias do Sul, and the Young Negotiators Academy. “A Few Good Laws: Tackling the Climate Crisis through Democracy and Due Diligence in NDC 3.0,” an in-person side event held on 17 June, was hosted in collaboration with LSE, RIE and AOSED.
- Submissions as of 10 June 2026. This includes submissions from Yemen and the United States, both non-Parties to the Paris Agreement, at time of writing.