Three days before the end of COP15, Prof. Carraro chaired the side-event “Pathway towards low carbon society” where researchers from the international network for Low Carbon Society

presented synthesis and results of their work. The network involves partners from all over the world. Participants joint the event here in Copenhagen from Europe (Mr. Lechtenbohmer and Mr. Tabet), Japan (Mrs. Kainuma), China (Prof. Jiang), and India (Prof. Shukla).

Mr. Lechtenbohmer from Germany started off with a summary of the inaugural meeting that was held in Bologna in October 2009 and presented the Synthesis Report published by the LCS-RNet Secretariat hosted by IGES, Japan. The goal of the network is to promote research cooperation to enhance understanding of how a future low carbon society will look like. In that occasion a roadmap was discussed and proposed. Five are the main points of the agreed roadmap:

1) Long and mid term targets;

2) Economic aspects of low carbon societies;

3) Role of technology;

4) Public policy and life style change;

5) Cross-cutting issues such as planning for land use and human resource development;

Dr. Clini, Director of the Minister for the Environment, Land and Sea – Italy, managed to take a break from the negotiations to join the event and give a insightful speech. He emphasized the role this network could play in addressing climate change because as it gives an example of an important infrastructure to approach the climate change issue. Besides what will happen in Copenhagen, it is crucial to identify concrete ways to identify technologies and mechanisms for facilitating international cooperation on appropriate technologies and energy systems. In this perspective, the activities of the low carbon network represent an important step forward: participants from the LCS-RNet brought examples of transition path towards low carbon societies from their own countries, stressing the role of domestic actions and policies in order to promote technology diffusion and social and behavioral changes.