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The net-zero agenda and its local impacts, including place attachment, communities and livelihoods 

Friday 4th March 2022, 9.30am to 5pm.

The (PloCC) group hosted an interdisciplinary one-day workshop online to address local impacts of the net-zero agenda and the route to a low-carbon future on 4th March 2022. 
The morning session set the scene, providing brief position talks from invited experts across policy, land use, business and community, followed by a panel discussion. In the afternoon facilitator-led discussions were held, aimed at tangible outcomes for future research in relation to places and net zero. 

The event was open to all – from postgrad students and early career researchers to senior academics across all disciplines from ȫ���Ʊ and beyond, as well as interested stakeholders and non-academics. 

The aim of the event was to form new networks to identify specific research goals and form new collaborations. These could in the form of project proposals and funding, or academic papers or focus groups. Participants were invited to “Come prepared to think, listen, challenge, and collaborate!” 

Context: 

The net-zero agenda has substantial implications for land use (and thus changes in the countryside we see around us), energy (and thus further landscape/coastal changes), and building energy & materials (and therefore the appearance of our towns and cities). All have a ‘place’ aspect, meaning that the relations between local communities and the places they live in and love will be affected, and will therefore evoke strong emotions from the public as well as setting strong challenges for the affected sectors and for policy makers. 

This topic is of interest for many academic disciplines, including scientific disciplines where low carbon and net-zero related technologies are being developed, or natural sciences where ecology, hydrology, biology and coastal changes may be observed. Moreover, the social sciences, arts, humanities, psychology and education address how people react and how they could be encouraged to change behaviour. Business and finance sectors furthermore relate to the feasibility and scale of adoption or investment in these new technologies, as well as the influence of consumers on different initiatives through their choices.

In short, the cross-disciplinary challenge is enormous, and needs to be addressed by a multi-faceted approach. This workshop brings together perspectives from a selection of speakers from across different roles (governmental policy, community, business, science) to stimulate discussion in the workshop sessions which followed and work towards informed and relevant research project ideas.  
This workshop was supported by the NERC discipline hopping funding scheme.