Lead Convener: J. Skea (Imperial College London, Centre for Environmental Policy, London - UK)

The transition towards a low carbon economy needs innovation to create opportunities for reducing emissions, lowering costs and improving welfare. While there has been a significant scaling up of public and private sector energy RD&D; efforts, these have yet to reach the levels required to achieve climate policy goals. This session will examine how policies and measures to support energy innovation can be made effective. Our aim is to exchange international experience, drawing on a range of disciplines. The session will consider: the adequacy of current energy innovation efforts; investment priorities and methods for establishing them; institutional frameworks and policy instruments; the role of stakeholder groups; and effective governance, consultation and engagement arrangements. The session will be introduced by a 10-minute presentation defining innovation needs and reviewing global energy trends and activities. The session will be broken into two parts. The theme of the first part will be the design of successful policies for energy innovation; the theme of the second will be stakeholder engagement in innovation and technology deployment. In each part, there will be an invited keynote presentation followed by a panel discussion guided towards practical, policy-relevant conclusions focused on the low-carbon transition.

Lead Conveners: S. Treyer (IDDRI - Sciences Po, IDDRI, Paris - France) P. Guillaumont P. [email protected] (FERDI - Universit� d'Auvergne, Clermont Ferrand - France)

The SDG framework is defining a post 2015 agenda with the aim to impact positively the capacity of governments, individually and collectively, to ensure well being for all on the planet, integrating development and environmental targets. Climate change mitigation and adaptation are integrated in the proposed SDG framework as a specific goal, while all goals like access to essential services or infrastructures are also supposed to be reached in a sustainable, climate smart, way. Two important milestones for the construction of the SDG regime are the Addis Ababa conference on Financing sustainable development (July 2015) , and the UN General Assembly in September 2015 where SDGs could be adopted.

This session will explore possible synergies and interlinkages between the two negotiation processes, and will particularly aim at discussing the impact that their joint post 2015 implementation is expected to have. To what extent will they make a difference with regard to former existing frameworks like the MDGs ? Under what conditions could their implementation mechanisms, and particularly for what concerns the mobilization of finance, be synergetic for climate and for development ?

Lead Conveners: D. Esty (Yale University, Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, New Haven, Connecticut, USA); J. De Melo (FERDI, Clermont-Ferrand - France)

This panel will explore options for a restructured architecture for the 2015 Paris climate change agreement with the goal of strengthening governance and broadening engagement to deliver better outcomes. As the limited progress to address the build-up of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in the atmosphere over the two decades since the launch of the Framework Convention on Climate Change has demonstrated, a successful global response to climate change will require a more wide-ranging set of actions and behavioral change than national governments can generate on their own. This parallel session brings together various proposals for injecting new life into the global community�s response to climate change through systematic links to other regimes like the trade regime, a legal structure that provides a mechanism for engaging mayors, governors, premiers, and other sub-national leaders as well CEOs, and a framework of plurilateral �clubs� of climate change actors. In addition, the panel will address the fragmented international climate change governance structure � and ask how to build a more integrated and effective climate change regime.

Lead Convener: A. Jordan (Tyndall Centre, ENV, Norwich - UK)

When set against the latest scientific predictions, the current policy responses to climate change are perceived to be painfully inadequate, especially those centred on the international regime. In anticipation of the Paris conference in 2015, hopes are building that �new� forms of governance will offer a transformative solution to the governance gaps in the regime. These new forms include national policies adopted by states, as well as transnational experiments that involve domestic actors in a large number of countries, and operate across public and private divides.

This session will showcase and critically evaluate the latest findings from several international projects that are actively examining examples of the �new� climate governance - many so recent that they were not included in AR5. The first part examines the main contours and architectures of �new� governance; the second identifies and explores likely new priorities for science and for policy after Paris 2015.

Lead Conveners: C. Adler (ETH Zurich, DUSYS TdLab, Zurich - Switzerland); S. Moore (International Social Science Council, Paris Cedex 15 - France)

Successful mitigation of and adaptation to climate change will require profound social change and new ways of doing science. This session focuses on transdisciplinary research in the context of global environmental change and the imperative to generate new kinds of knowledge to accelerate transformations to a more sustainable world. The keynote talk will focus on the International Council for Social Science (ISSC)'s Transformations to Sustainability Programme, showing how it can support research that is at once solutions-oriented; international; interdisciplinary; transdisciplinary; and designed to build capacity for international research collaborations. Seed grant recipients will report on experiences and insights in co-designing and establishing international, inter- and transdisciplinary collaborative research projects. Conscious of the challenges transdisciplinary science and need for discussion about transdisciplinary research to move beyond enumerating the inherent challenges, the session also calls for serious reflection on the quality of transdisciplinary research, including its transferability and scalability for policy. Finally, in recognition of the importance of building research capacity, contributions from early-career scientists on the session theme are particularly welcomed.