Challenges to Deep-Decarbonization to Achieve Net Zero for India: A Review

Net-zero emissions chemical industry in a world of limited resources

Moving toward Net-Zero Emissions Requires New Alliances for Carbon Dioxide Removal

Mapping the scientific knowledge and approaches to defining and measuring hate crime, hate speech, and hate incidents: A systematic review.

The necessity of transitioning to net zero economies is widely recognised by the wider scientific (including social science) community, policymakers, business and the wider public. In response to advice from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC, 2019), the UK Government has set a target for a net zero carbon economy by 2050, with the Scottish Government having lined up with an earlier 2045 target (given Scotland’s resource base and capacity for more rapid decarbonisation). Meeting these commitments requires that different departments of the government can effectively work both with each other, and the wider industry, public and research communities, to determine how best to achieve this transition, securing opportunities for economic and societal gain while minimising any potential negative impacts. This raises a particular challenge in that the required research and knowledge base to support the net zero transition cuts across many disciplines and a diversity of expert and stakeholder communities, where multiple technical ‘languages’ are used, and different perspectives taken in setting and addressing questions. Thus, there is an urgent need to establish common frameworks and languages in setting and addressing the multitude of research requirements in an integrated and informative way. In this brief we consider what such a framework may look like if we take one of the key net zero challenges to be understanding the policy, political economy and societal consequences of any net zero action or ‘pathway’ to be. Here we present a ‘first draft’ of our ‘Net Zero Principles Framework’, with the aim of opening a dialogue across research, policy and industry communities to enable further co-creation.

SMEs collectively account for a significant proportion of greenhouse gas emissions and so there is a need for urgent action to be taken by SMEs in the journey to achieve net zero. In this article, we provide a comprehensive conceptual framework for SMEs to draw from in the journey towards net zero by synthesizing the academic and grey literature. By bringing together key strands of the literature, we derive a conceptual model that provides a clear pathway for SMEs to embark on their net zero journeys. The framework we invent involves understanding the position of the SME in the value chain, understanding the pressures from stakeholders, undertaking greenhouse gas accounting to measure current levels of carbon emissions, undertaking internal changes towards the net zero agenda, undertaking external facing changes towards the net zero agenda, uncoupling, community participation, and updating business activities regularly. This model acts as a progressive decision-making and continuous improvement framework that will be an asset to SMEs as they undertake net zero activities. Overall, the paper contributes to the sustainability literature by being the first to synthesize the academic and grey literature to develop a comprehensive conceptual framework for SMEs to attain net zero.

Barriers to Care for Antenatal Depression

In recent years, the target of reaching “net zero” emissions by 2050 has come to the forefront of global climate politics. Net zero would see carbon emissions matched by carbon removals and should allow the planet to avoid dangerous climate change. But the recent prominence of this goal should not distract from the fact that there are many possible versions of net zero. Each of them will have different climate justice implications, and some of them could have very negative consequences for the world's poor. This article demonstrates the many ambiguities of net zero, and argues in favor of a net zero strategy in which those who can reasonably bear the burden adopt early and aggressive mitigation policies. We also argue for a net zero strategy in which countries place the lion's share of their faith in known emissions reduction approaches, rather than being heavily reliant on as-yet-unproven “negative emissions techniques.” Our overarching goal is to put net zero in its place, by providing a clear-sighted view of what net zero will achieve, and where the “net” in net zero needs to be tightened further if the world is to achieve climate justice.

Climate change endangers human survival, causing heat waves, floods, storms, polar ice loss, ocean acidification and rising sea levels. These effects harm the food supply and living environments and contribute to chronic diseases. Climate agreements like the Paris Agreement and Kyoto Protocol set net-zero emissions and carbon neutrality targets. However, their definitions, differences and challenges need clarification. This paper reviews net zero and carbon neutrality initiatives in supply chain management. CiteSpace analysis of 61 articles on net zero and 44 on carbon neutrality highlights their differences, challenges, practices and research gaps. Net-zero emissions cover more greenhouse gases and emission stages, fitting supply chain management through life-cycle assessment. A life-cycle perspective and strategies like bio-based materials, optimised transportation and electric vehicles are recommended for effective mitigation. Finally, the paper identifies research gaps at global, country, industry and company levels, suggesting research questions for future exploration.

BackgroundThis study aims to rank policy concerns and policy-related research issues in order to identify policy and research gaps on access to medicines (ATM) in low- and middle-income countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), as perceived by policy makers, researchers, NGO and international organization representatives, as part of a global prioritization exercise.MethodsData collection, conducted between January and May 2011, involved face-to-face interviews in El Salvador, Colombia, Dominican Republic, and Suriname, and an e-mail survey with key-stakeholders. Respondents were asked to choose the five most relevant criteria for research prioritization and to score policy/research items according to the degree to which they represented current policies, desired policies, current research topics, and/or desired research topics. Mean scores and summary rankings were obtained. Linear regressions were performed to contrast rankings concerning current and desired policies (policy gaps), and current and desired research (research gaps).ResultsRelevance, feasibility, and research utilization were the top ranked criteria for prioritizing research. Technical capacity, research and development for new drugs, and responsiveness, were the main policy gaps. Quality assurance, staff technical capacity, price regulation, out-of-pocket payments, and cost containment policies, were the main research gaps. There was high level of coherence between current and desired policies: coefficients of determination (R2) varied from 0.46 (Health system structure; r = 0.68, P <0.01) to 0.86 (Sustainable financing; r = 0.93, P <0.01). There was also high coherence between current and desired research on Rational selection and use of medicines (r = 0.71, P <0.05, R2 = 0.51), Pricing/affordability (r = 0.82, P <0.01, R2 = 0.67), and Sustainable financing (r = 0.76, P <0.01, R2 = 0.58). Coherence was less for Health system structure (r = 0.61, P <0.01, R2 = 0.38).ConclusionsThis study combines metrics approaches, contributing to priority setting methodology development, with country and regional level stakeholder participation. Stakeholders received feedback with the results, and we hope to have contributed to the discussion and implementation of ATM research and policy priorities in LAC.

Research funders can reduce research waste and publication bias by requiring their grantees to register and report clinical trials. To determine the extent to which 21 major European research funders' efforts to reduce research waste and publication bias in clinical trials meet World Health Organization (WHO) best practice benchmarks and to investigate areas for improvement. This cross-sectional study was based on 2 to 3 independent assessments of each funder's publicly available documentation and validation of results with funders during 2021. Included funders were the 21 largest nonmultilateral public and philanthropic medical research funders in Europe, with a combined budget of more than US $22 billion. Scoring of funders using an 11-item assessment tool based on WHO best practice benchmarks, grouped into 4 broad categories: trial registries, academic publication, monitoring, and sanctions. Funder references to reporting standards were captured. The primary outcome was funder adoption or nonadoption of 11 policy and monitoring measures to reduce research waste and publication bias as set out by WHO best practices. The secondary outcomes were whether and how funder policies referred to reporting standards. Outcomes were preregistered after a pilot phase that used the same outcome measures. Among 21 of the largest nonmultilateral public and philanthropic funders in Europe, some best practices were more widely adopted than others, with 14 funders (66.7%) mandating prospective trial registration and 6 funders (28.6%) requiring that trial results be made public on trial registries within 12 months of trial completion. Less than half of funders actively monitored whether trials were registered (9 funders [42.9%]) or whether results were made public (8 funders [38.1%]). Funders implemented a mean of 4 of 11 best practices in clinical trial transparency (36.4%) set out by WHO. The extent to which funders adopted WHO best practice items varied widely, ranging from 0 practices for the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the ministries of health of Germany and Italy to 10 practices (90.9%) for the UK National Institute of Health Research. Overall, 9 funders referred to reporting standards in their policies. This study found that many European medical research funder policy and monitoring measures fell short of WHO best practices. These findings suggest that funders worldwide may need to identify and address gaps in policies and processes.

Under rapid global warming, changes in the climate system are increasingly evident and detectable, even for extremes and at the local scale. This, in part, has motivated countries to target achieving net zero emissions in the coming decades and to limit further global warming in line with the Paris Agreement. Climate changes under net zero emissions are projected to be substantial but may be harder to detect. It is critical that changes under net zero are well understood, both in terms of the effects of delay in emissions cessation and how these changes differ across timescales.Here, we use a set of net zero 1000-year-long ACCESS-ESM-1.5 simulations to study the detectability of climate changes given a range of emission cessation years. We demonstrate that some local climate changes and changes in climate variability and extremes under net zero emissions may be significant enough to be detectable over human lifetimes. Some large-scale changes, especially in the cryosphere and oceans, and in the Southern Hemisphere, would be detectable within years or decades of emissions cessation. The benefits of earlier emissions cessation are also detectable even at the local scale.This kind of analysis is not currently possible in a multi-model framework. A lack of planned coordinated net zero experiments on timescales beyond 300 years has the potential to undermine policymaking related to long-term climate changes. Using findings from the ACCESS-ESM-1.5 experiments, we demonstrate the problems that a lack of long net zero emissions simulations poses and call for coordinated 1000-year-long simulations.We also argue that communication of ongoing climate changes under net zero emissions needs to go beyond projected global-average temperature changes (i.e. the Zero Emissions Commitment or ZEC) and emphasise other Earth System changes and local climate changes.

Pathways towards net zero: Assessment of enablers and barriers in Nepal

Net-zero CO2 by 2050 scenarios for the United States in the Energy Modeling Forum 37 study

The use of the term ‘net zero’ has rapidly and recently become mainstream but is often not well-defined in the literature. A brief history of the term was researched, followed by a systematic literature review to consider the research question: how have the different net-zero terms been defined in the literature, and do they indicate knowledge or process gaps which identify future research opportunities? Academic research articles were searched for the term ‘net zero’ and filtered for the term ‘definition’, resulting in 65 articles. Definitions were analysed according to scale: single-building, community, urban-system, and country-wide scale. The search did not return any definitions concerning country-wide emissions (from agriculture, forestry, large-scale transportation, or industrial and mining processes), a surprising outcome given the emissions impact of these areas. The main knowledge and process gaps were found to be in four areas: governance, design, measurement and verification, and circular framework. A clear net-zero definition is required at the appropriate scale (single-building or urban-system scale), which includes explicit system boundaries and emission scopes, life-cycle energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and should incorporate a dynamic approach. The scale most likely to achieve net zero is the urban-system scale due to the potential synergies of its interacting elements and energy flows.

There is growing interest in how the climate would change under net zero carbon dioxide emissions pathways as many nations aim to reach net zero in coming decades. In today's rapidly warming world, many changes in the climate are detectable, even in the presence of internal variability, but whether climate changes under net zero are expected to be detectable is less well understood. Here, we use a set of 1000‐year‐long net zero carbon dioxide emissions simulations branching from different points in the 21st century to examine detectability of large‐scale, regional and local climate changes as time passes under net zero emissions. We find that even after net zero, there are continued detectable changes to climate for centuries. While local changes and changes in extremes are more challenging to detect, Southern Hemisphere warming and Northern Hemisphere cooling become detectable at many locations within a few centuries under net zero emissions. We also study how detectable delays in achieving emissions cessation are across climate indices. We find that for global mean surface temperature and other large‐scale indices, such as Antarctic and Arctic sea ice extent, the effects of an additional 5 years of high greenhouse gas emissions are detectable. Such delays in emissions cessation result in significantly different local temperatures for most of the planet, and most of the global population. The long simulations used here help with identifying local climate change signals. Multi‐model frameworks will be useful to examine confidence in these changes and improve understanding of post‐net zero climate changes.