Implications for air quality from net zero policies and pathways in the UK

空气污染和人类引起的气候变化是人类健康面临的两大环境风险，其原因和影响是复杂和相互关联的。有人呼吁采取协调一致的政策回应，但确定互惠政策并不像看起来那么简单。例如，政策的影响往往取决于经济、技术变化、社会或企业如何应对以及它们发生的更广泛的背景。而对温室气体或空气污染物排放的影响的方向和大小可能会在政策实施的整个生命周期内发生变化。这一博士学位将从系统的角度探索英国的具体净零政策，重点是确定在哪里可以实现空气污染的重大共同利益，以及哪里可能存在需要认识到的权衡，如果可能的话，减轻或最小化。该分析将着眼于预期政策终点的明显影响之外，以探索不同的路径和短暂活动如何在整个政策执行过程中影响空气污染。该项目将使用系统方法和证据合成来进行二次研究，产生新的见解，并确定主要的知识差距。它将旨在确定具体的风险和/或机会领域，并提供有关英国如何从限制气候影响的行动中利用更大的环境收益的当前想法。博士工作将受益于与Defra空气质量和工业排放团队的现有关系。

Air pollution and human-induced climate change represent two of the greatest environmental risks to human health and their causes and impacts are complex and interrelated. Calls have been made for a co-ordinated policy response but identifying mutually beneficial policies is not as simple as it might seem. The impacts of policy are often dependant on, for example, the economy, technological change, how society or business responds and the wider context in which they occur. And the direction and magnitude of impact on emissions of greenhouse gases or air pollutants may change through the lifetime of the policy implementation. This PhD will explore specific UK net zero policies from a systemic perspective, with a focus on identifying where there are opportunities for significant co-benefits for air pollution that can be realised and where there may be trade-offs that need to be recognised and, if possible, mitigated, or minimised. The analysis will look further than the obvious impacts of desired policy endpoints to explore how different pathways and transitory activities affect air pollution throughout policy implementation. The project will use systems approaches alongside evidence synthesis to carry out secondary research, produce novel insights, and identify major knowledge gaps. It will aim to identify specific areas of risk and/or opportunity, and to inform current thinking about how the UK can leverage greater environmental gains from actions to limit our climate impacts. The PhD work will benefit from existing relationships with the Air Quality and Industrial Emissions Team in Defra.