Work Packages

The transformation of land use to achieve Net Zero is an unprecedented challenge requiring a novel and creative approach. Innovation lies at the heart of the Hub’s work – in particular its three work packages which represent the foundations of our work as follows.

1. Agile Policy Centre

The Hub will be both proactive and reactive, able to drive debate into the issues it has identified as critical to the transformation of land use, as well as respond to specific requests from policy makers via the Agile Policy Centre.

The Agile Policy Centre has been designed to provide responses to policy-maker inquiries in a time frame and format that they need. These will include answers to immediate, urgent questions, a rapid evidence review on a specific issue or the need for expert support or a specialist – as a one-off or embedded, long-term into a policy team.

Whatever the request, the APC will access findings from the best available, established and novel research, synthesised across disciplines and accompanied by clarity on knowledge gaps, data limitations, and claims validation. Where appropriate, APC findings will be disseminated to the wider Hub community in accessible formats that reflect the type of knowledge provided.

2. Transdisciplinary Work Package

The aim of the Transdisciplinary Work Package is to convene a research community from the full spectrum of experts and professionals connected with UK land use. This will include national and local government policymakers, researchers from across the sciences, social sciences and humanities, agricultural advisors, farmers, land managers, environmental regulators and industry.

The community will catalyse engagements between and across these disciplines, co-designing and co-producing a diverse range of innovative tools, platforms and practices for evidence synthesis, learning and knowledge dissemination throughout the hub and beyond.

These include a combination of agile response, experimental, contrapuntal, and public consultations and engagement research, and studies conducted through living labs and digital twining models, in each of the nations of the UK.

The WG also looks to foster a wider awareness of the value and challenges of transdisciplinary research among all stakeholders and actively strengthen the UK’s transdisciplinary research capability and capacity.

3. Net Zero Futures Platform

The objective of Net Zero Futures Platform is to establish a comprehensive set of plausible and innovative steps or Pathways required to reach Net Zero while delivering co-benefits for nature and people.

These Pathways will be developed within a Scenario framework – a commonly recognized and accepted language for understanding and pursuing transformative change. This framework will enable comparability and flexibility across the three topics and the four nations – recognising different starting and end points between them.

The Platform will employ a whole system approach to explore what levers and interventions are needed (by whom, and when) and to account for all drivers of change, potential benefits, and trade-offs across social, economic and environmental outcomes.