Low-carbon Asia: technical contributions to an ambitious goal for sustainability

Abstract

Despite a substantial effort orchestrated to accelerate green development worldwide, many challenges remain, notably in Asia where the economic growth has been accelerating. Decoupling high greenhouse gases emission without compromising the economic growth is a great challenge. The coordinated efforts at different levels covering from top-down and bottom-up measures are essential to implement the low-carbon emissions scenarios with reduced carbon footprints. Efforts such as through governmental policy and incentives, investment in green technology and promotional activities by NGOs to promote green transformation towards low-carbon emissions development are ongoing. The progress has not been always fast enough due to the gaps among the key stakeholders including the central and local governments, experts and business entities and the community at large. Organisation of the international conference to promote environmentally friendly and sustainable transformation is important to bridge these gaps. The conference series of International Conference of Low Carbon Asia 2015 (ICLCA’15) aims to accelerate the green development in Asia. The 1st ICLCA’15 conference <www.utm.my/iclca2015/> was held in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, from 11 to 13 October 2015, and it was held in conjunction with the 4th Annual Meeting of Low Carbon Asia Research Network (LoCARNet) in Malaysia with the theme “Positive Action from Asia—Towards COP21 and Beyond” <lcs-rnet.org/locarnet_meetings/2015/09/1371>. The LoCARNet is a network for multi-layered stakeholders to promote research cooperation related to low-carbon growth and policy making. The double event was attended by 200 international scientists and policy makers from research institutions, government agencies, municipalities, universities and NGOs including from Cambodia, China, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The double event culminated in the launch of a regional Low-carbon Emission Declaration, the “LoCARNet Iskandar Malaysia Declaration” <lcs-rnet.org/locarnet_meetings/2015/10/1398> that was disseminated at the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21), Paris, France <www.cop21paris.org>.