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.

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.

Temperature records are critical for understanding past and future climate. However, reconstructing past temperature dynamics is incredibly difficult. Of the currently available terrestrial archives of past temperature, these are often spatially limited, suffer from ambiguity around calibration, or require large sample sizes. These issues have prevented the development of a high resolution, high density network of terrestrial temperature records. This is now often considered the single most significant gap in the palaeoclimate archive. Here, we seek to provide a breakthrough in the field of temperature reconstruction by developing a new palaeothermometer. For this, we use speleothems (cave stalagmites). Speleothems grow in layers, which can be dated like the rings in a tree. The chemistry in each layer offers an unprecedented resolution of environmental information, constrained by an absolute age model over 500,000 years. At the Lancaster Environment centre, we have recently developed a technique which allows phosphate to be extracted from the stalagmite layers. This is a critically important advance in the research field, as phosphate-oxygen isotopes are known to be controlled by temperature dynamics. Our first measurements of the phosphate-oxygen isotope composition in cave drip waters and modern cave calcite provide clear evidence that the cave temperature signal can be captured and stored within the speleothem record. As the internal temperature of shallow cave systems are known to reflect the external average air temperature (plus or minus localised effects), this provides an exciting opportunity through which a truly independent terrestrial temperature record may be built. This research aims to build and test a modern-day calibration between cave temperature and speleothem phosphate-oxygen isotopes. This will enable a platform from which precisely dated, well preserved, independent temperature records can be confidently obtained from the global archive of speleothems at a spatial and temporal scale hitherto unprecedented.

This project will establish an international research network exploring the Future of the City Centre, through a partnership between Northumbria University; University of Strathclyde; University of Newcastle, Australia; University of Paraiba, Brazil; and the University of South Africa. The research network will examine how city centres are being transformed by a number of internal, external and contextual factors and the implications of these changes for the Future of the City Centre. The theoretical perspectives will involve past, present and future. Emphasis will be visions for the post-industrial, post-commercial and post-retail city. This theme and the related sub-topics will enable the development of future city models and will help to contextualise urban change. Provision for creative industries, cultural events and different forms of entertainment may offer vitality, together with visitors and responsible tourism. City authorities are starting to realise that structural changes are happening in city centres, and are responding by establishing core groups of officers to consider these issues. This proposal will provide a distinct focus on innovation for the Future of the City Centre. It will also enable academic research to inform new policies, from an inter-disciplinary perspective incorporating views from different cities. The research network is proposed at a time when governments, communities, business, artists, entertainers, historians, sociologists and others, are re-evaluating their interactions with cities. The key aim of this research network is to explore the Future of the City Centre, informed by international perspectives of expert knowledge from a range of disciplines in each locality. Invited speakers will represent education, local government, non-government organisations, business and community groups. There will be four symposiums over 24 months. They will take place in four different continents and establish a view from developed and developing countries. While individual cities cannot represent continents or even countries, they can be indicative of responses from different geographies, governance systems, cultures, heritage and populations. The UK Government Office for Science City Futures Project established Newcastle upon Tyne as pilot city. According to the United Nations, Joao Pessoa in Brazil is the second greenest city in the world. Newcastle, Australia, has established a leading smart city approach, as part of its future. Mogale City in South Africa has created an integrated development plan, as a statement of independence from Pretoria. The universities and academics chosen from the cities for this proposal are each offering distinctive perspectives. Professor Giddings promotes the arts, architecture, and urban design in the culture of communities; Professor Silva researches sustainable urbanism; Dr Jefferies investigates public and private partnerships; and Professor Rwelamila practices city management systems. In addition Dr Rogerson will offer data and methodologies from the University of Strathclyde Institute of Future Cities. Each symposium will include selected speakers who will be asked to prepare position papers to establish the context for debates on the Future of the City Centre. Speakers will represent academia, local government, non-government organisations, businesses and communities. The outcome will be possible scenarios that may be formed into the inter-disciplinary policies. It is proposed that 20 invitees will attend each symposium over a two-day period, together with open access for all interested parties. In addition to world-wide availability of the project data through the website, publications and other outputs, participants will work with their local policy makers to develop novel scenarios. The focus on exploring a range of perspectives during an era of fundamental change will assist cities around the world to re-assess their strategies.

As the world moves towards low carbon emissions, the need for mining is as great as it has ever been. The contemporary paradigm is 'sustainable mining' that is profitable but protects environments, ecosystems and humans. The Philippines is a mineral-rich nation with a legacy and significant potential for future mining. The move towards sustainable mining in the Philippines requires novel and effective baselining and monitoring of contaminant histories, an understanding of the fate, transport and impacts of the contaminants, and methods for remediating and recovering resources from legacy mining areas and for promoting ecosystem and landscape recovery. In this project, we address all of these needs by adopting a catchment-based approach to evaluate legacy impacts and sustainable mining futures in the Philippines. We do so because all mining takes place in and affects mineralised river systems. Building on existing UK-Philippines collaborative research and our NERC DOST-PCIEERD funded Partnership and Project Development (PPD) grant, this project aims to realise a combined geomorphological- and biogeochemical-based approach to establish new baseline, environmental impact monitoring and numerical modelling approaches to determine resource potential and remediate, rehabilitate and manage catchments affected by legacy, contemporary and future mining. We will achieve this aim by addressing the following objectives: (1) Demonstrate and develop novel technologies and analytical approaches to establish baseline water and ecological quality in Philippine river catchments, and to monitor and evaluate the impact of future mines and sustainable mining practice; (2) Quantify the environmental impacts of contaminated sediment from legacy and contemporary mining in an exemplar Philippine catchment; (3) Develop and verify a 3D numerical model of how mine contaminated waste has moved through Philippine river catchments over centennial time scales and to predict future patterns of contamination under different climate change and management scenarios; (4) Determine the environmental impacts, risks and resource and remediation potential of Philippine mine tailings dams; (5) Propose a catchment-based approach in developing policies and strategies to manage mineralised watersheds in the Philippines and identify the best practices, challenges, and lessons learnt in managing mining catchments for sustainable implementation to other tropical nations. As an exemplar of a tropical, mineralised nation with a rich biodiversity, the development of sustainable mining in the Philippines will be of global relevance to achieving similar outcomes elsewhere.