Land Use for Net Zero Hub

The Land Use For Net Zero (LUNZ) Hub aims to establish an agile, digitally enabled translation facility for the ‘Transforming Land Use for Net Zero, Nature and People’ programme. The Hub will convene a transdisciplinary, cross-sectoral community to support the UK’s land and agricultural sectors in achieving net zero, while meeting other environmental and societal goals. We will mobilise a large meta-community of practice around land use, farm system management and soil health for net zero, enrolling supply chain members, agricultural advisory services, farming organisations, green finance companies and land users as active co-investigators in the Hub team. The Hub is co-led by a social and a physical scientist, with workpackages co-led by stakeholder and academic partners. The Hub will utilise an agile, rapid-response approach in the LUNZ Policy Centre, which includes institutional ‘call down’ work. The Hub will empower change-makers through behavioural science approaches, annual ‘Net Zero Pioneer’ awards, embed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in all Hub activities and net zero pathways, supporting Early Career Researchers across the whole programme. Approaches include co-development of scenarios and pathways, crucible events, our Net Zero Futures Lab across the four nations of the UK, plus Digital Twin, Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Tool mobilisation to make evidence accessible to policy-makers and practitioners. Through collaborative processes, the Hub will co-create plausible and innovative net zero scenarios and associated pathways, with related evidence to underpin policy options for the seventh carbon budget period that feed directly into decision-making acceptable to all four nations.