International research suggests that in response to climate change global cities are now engaging in strategic efforts to effect a low carbon transition. That is, to enhance resilience and secure resources in the face of the impacts of climate change, resource constraints and in relation to new government and market pressures for carbon control. But significant questions remain unexplored. First, limited research has been undertaken internationally to comparatively examine how different cities in the north and south are responding to the challenges of climate change. Second, it is not clear whether the strategic intent of low carbon transitions can be realised in different urban contexts.

Consequently, we propose to establish an international network, to be undertaken between leading scholars on urban climate change responses as an important step towards addressing these deficits. The network will focus on the research and policy issues involved in comparing and researching the broader dynamics and implications of low carbon urbanism. This network includes Australia, China, India, South Africa and the US and builds on existing scholars and research teams with whom we currently have bilateral and ad hoc collaborations. Our proposed collaboration is designed to create greater density of network connections and enhancing the depth of each connection by three sets of initiatives:

1. International Networking Opportunities: The first element of the ESRC initiative will be to support significant international research opportunities for UK researchers. We will undertake programmed and structure visits to each national context to: increase knowledge of one another's research and plans; to gain intelligence about the research landscape in the partner countries in this field in order to build up a global picture of research expertise; to exchange ideas about possible future collaborative research projects; and to build personal relationships that are at the heart of successful long-distance research partnerships.

2. International Comparative Collaboration: The second element of the network is to facilitate interaction between the partners in the research network and with a wider group of UK and international researchers through two connected forum that will meet four times. A. International Research Workshops (Network partners plus other relevant UK and international researchers). These meetings will focus primarily on enhancing comparison and collaboration with a wider group of researchers but will also serve as an important opportunity for developing publications in the form of special issues and edited collections. B. Network Partners Research Forum (Network partners only). The network will also sponsor a number of much smaller research forums, focused on the network partners. These workshops will enable a structured and protected space for the partners to share the findings from their ongoing work, and to explore and examine the implications of the issues and themes emerging from the larger workshops in this context.

3. International Network Infrastructure: The third element will focus on establishing the necessary infrastructure for promoting effective international research collaboration. The network will pursue two projects. A. Information Infrastructure: Durham will establish a website that facilitates collaboration among international partners. All partner researchers and institutions will have the opportunity to present and regularly update information about their ongoing research. The website will also serve as a base for communicating about events, visits, awards, etc. The website will also host audio and video recordings of workshops. B. International Network Coordinator: Additionally Durham will support a 20% network coordinator to manage and organize the visits, workshops, teleconferences and the website.

Potential Impact:
The likely beneficiaries of the proposed research include government, private sector, research funders and civil society organisations. At the international level, the work will be of relevance to several international organisations with whom the project team have established links, including the urban climate change teams at the World Bank, UNEP, UNDP , UN-Habitat, and ICLEI (based in Bonn), as well as to the C40 and The Climate Group. The research will also be of interest to local and national governments in the participating countries, as well as to the UK government, who have a specific mission to further international responses to climate change. We will work with our network partners to ensure that we build upon their own existing relationships with their relevant urban and national governments through which to communicate our findings. Through the Durham Energy Institute, we have established a close link with the Department for Energy and Climate Change and will ensure that we communicate our findings through this means.

In terms of private sector organisations, likely beneficiaries include national and transnational corporations active in the industrial production, infrastructure, development, property and energy sectors as well as firms who are seeking to develop low carbon technologies, processes and practices within the urban contexts. We will use our existing relations with ICLEI who are a key knowledge exchange intermediary to extend the communication of findings to these users through the life of the project.

Over the medium-long term, we expect that the project will be able to deliver the following two principle benefits to these different parties:

(1) Enhanced capacity to address the challenges of the urban low carbon transitions by: (a) increasing knowledge about the dynamics of low carbon transitions in each of the partners contexts and of the opportunities and barriers that are being encountered in these processes; (b) providing new understanding of the types of intermediation, knowledge and learning that are required in order to sustain systemic responses to the challenges of climate change; and (c) developing a systematic assessment of the benefits and limitations of specific low carbon transitions and lessons which can be learnt for the development of low carbon transitions in the future.
(2) Contributing to effective policy and investment decisions for the future development of low carbon cities. Findings will provide an indication of the generic pressures and opportunities that are emerging in different cities as they seek to enact a low carbon transition. Our analysis will be able to inform government, private sector and civil society organizations as to the extent to which systemic transitions are emerging or whether the potential of low carbon transitions to address vulnerabilities and rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions is being squandered through the adoption of a piecemeal, fragmented approach. It will pinpoint different sectoral and geographical barriers to addressing climate change and provide a basis upon which to develop new forms of policy intervention to further the ambitions of a low carbon transition. This will be of particular relevance to organizations working in each international context, but will also be important to the UK government in furthering its key priority of addressing rising global emissions by providing an assessment of the potential for low carbon urban development.