Urban Low Carbon Transitions: A Comparative International Network - Australia, China, India, South Africa, US and UK

Completed

Other Cross-Cutting Technologies or Research(Environmental, social and economic impacts)

Basic and strategic applied research

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES (Geography and Environmental Studies)
SOCIAL SCIENCES (Town and Country Planning)
SOCIAL SCIENCES (Politics and International Studies)
SOCIAL SCIENCES (Development Studies)

Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Environmental dimensions)
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Policy and regulation)
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Other sociological economical and environmental impact of energy)
Other (Energy technology information dissemination)

Professor S Marvin
Geography
Durham University

Standard

ESRC

01 October 2015

31 March 2017

18 months

£14,955

North East

International

Professor S Marvin, Geography, Durham University

Dr HA Bulkeley, Geography, Durham University
Dr M Francesch-Huidobro, Public and Social Administration, City University of Hong Kong
Professor R Horne, Global Studies Social Sci and Planning, RMIT University, Australia
Professor P M McGuirk, UNLISTED, University of Newcastle Callaghan
Mr A Revi, Research, Indian Institute for Human Settlements
Dr P P Romero-Lankao, Center for Scie and Tech Policy Research, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
Dr W Solecki, UNLISTED, Hunter College CUNY
Professor M Swilling, Sch of Public Management and Planning, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Project Contact, Hunter College CUNY
Project Contact, City University of Hong Kong
Project Contact, Indian Institute for Human Settlements
Project Contact, University of Newcastle Australia
Project Contact, Stellenbosch University
Project Contact, University of Colorado at Boulder
Project Contact, RMIT University

Even against a background of substantial and rapidly growing investments in energy transitions, the international comparative dynamics of urban low carbon transitions has received remarkably little attention from researchers and funding agencies. The aim of this proposal is to establish an international network, to be undertaken between leading scholars on urban climate change responses as an important step towards addressing this deficit. This proposal offers a unique opportunity to develop a comparative network operating across north/south contexts, one that is rarely available. The objectives of the proposal are five-fold:1. Establishing the first international, north-south collaboration between a team of leading international researchers engaged in understanding low carbon urban transitions.2. Developing new insights through creating a context-sensitive, comparative approach for analysing the diversity of low carbon urban transitions and enhancing research design and methodological approaches in this field.3. Building sustained capability and capacity for future research in this area by moving beyond episodic bilateral relations to a programmed multi-lateral network4. Exploring the opportunities for learning from and up scaling current nationally based research projects to develop internationally comparative programmes in this field5. Disseminating the synthesised findings from this comparative work to academics and users via workshops and publications, thereby enhancing its impactThis network offers a significant opportunity to bring together researchers from both the global north and the global south, and to foster the potential for learning across these diverse urban contexts. While not intended to support new research, this proposal therefore provides a unique opportunity for activities to compare existing national research on low carbon transitions in a systematic and sustained programme.

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 theissues 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.

03/01/18