Jess Zionts recently completed her DPhil in the Environmental Change Institute working with Professor Myles Allen and external partners at the World Resources Institute exploring how decisions around greenhouse gases and land use change influence the development of mitigation strategies in the agriculture sector. She also explored how the concept of ‘net zero’ applies to the agri-food sector. This work built on her previous work at Oxford as an MSc student in the Environmental Change and Management programme, where Jess wrote her dissertation with Professor Allen on the policy implications of applying flow-based greenhouse gas metrics to Nationally Determined Contributions to the Paris Agreement.

Between the MSc and DPhil, Jess worked at the World Resources Institute on the Food and Climate Programmes. With the Food Programme, Jess contributed to various reports on land-sector mitigation strategies, including a ‘climate neutral’ plan for the Danish land sector, and an analysis of the impact of increased demand for wood on land use and climate. In the Climate Programme, Jess was a member of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Secretariat, contributing to the Corporate Land Sector and Removals Guidance. Jess was the lead author for the chapters on agricultural emissions, land use change, and data collection and quality.

Jess is now working with Professor Emily Grubert at Notre Dame University as a (remote) postdoctoral researcher modeling fossil asset retirement in the US. She is also available for corporate and academic consultations regarding metrics, target-setting, and mitigation strategy development in the land sector.