Nonstate and subnational climate governance activities are proliferating. Alongside them are databases and registries that attempt to calculate their contributions to global decarbonization. We label these registries “orchestration platforms” because they both aggregate disparate initiatives and attempt to steer them toward overarching objectives such as improved transparency, accountability, and effectiveness. While well-intentioned, many orchestration platforms adopt a narrow conception of “value” as either quantifiable greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions or relevant outputs. We offer a more comprehensive approach to valuing nonstate and subnational climate governance that is rooted in recognizing the potential for initiatives to become far-reaching (i.e., achieve scale) and durable (i.e., become entrenched). We illustrate the comparative advantage of our approach with reference to a particular case of nonstate governance: The Carbon Trust’s attempt to create product carbon footprints. By tracing the direct and indirect impacts of product carbon footprinting, we show that initial failures to generate quantifiable GHG reductions or produce relevant outputs do not reflect the intervention’s broader impacts through scaling to other jurisdictions and entrenching business practices that contribute to decarbonization. Taking this broader view of “value” can help policy-makers better understand and gauge the contribution of nonstate and subnational climate governance to global decarbonization.

This forum provides commentary on five accountability articles in this issue. In response to those pieces, it advances the argument that the study of accountability through the framework proposed by Kramarz and Park (and demonstrated by the empirical articles) can uncover key political dynamics that drive the design of global environmental governance initiatives. The utility of the practical application of accountability measures to ensure good design, rather than proper implementation, is less clear. Using the framework to study accountability does, however, provide an opening for debates over initiative design that may lead to improvements in global environmental governance outcomes.