Overview

The world needs a new model of economic progress that enables humanity to prosper within planetary boundaries. The current economic model, with its origins in the Industrial Revolution, produced a massive increase in human wealth and well-being during the 19th and 20th centuries. But in the early 21st century it has become increasingly clear that this model is environmentally unsustainable, insufficiently equitable, and inadequately robust. The goal of INET Oxford's work on sustainability is to develop insights that can help lead us to a new economic model that is just, inclusive, and enables high standards of material wellbeing within the "safe operating space" of our planet's physical and ecological systems.

The programme is addressing three fundamental questions:

1. Vision: What are the essential features of a new model of economic growth that is environmentally and financially sustainable, and resilient to future shocks?

2. Transition: What government policies and business strategies are required to transition to such a new model of prosperity and progress?

3. Metrics: What are the most important metrics of wealth and prosperity, along with metrics of the key planetary limits, that we will need to guide such a transition?

Related Projects


Recent Publications

Oct 2025
Blog
Americans are adapting to a warmer world — trading winter heat for summer cooling
François Cohen ,  Matthieu Glachant ,  Magnus Söderberg
Oct 2025
INET Working Paper
Sept 2025
Journal
Sept 2025
Journal
The power of bridging decision scales: Model coupling for advanced climate policy analysis
in PNAS
Tatiana Filatova ,  Joos Akkerman ,  Francesco Bosello ,  Theodoros Chatzivasileiadis ,  Ignasi Cortés Arbués ,  Amineh Ghorbani ,  Olga Ivanova ,  Nina Knittel ,  Jan Kwakkel ,  Francesco Lamperti ,  Nicholas R. Magliocca ,  Giacomo Marangoni ,  Stefan Nabernegg ,  Anton Pichler ,  Adrian Poujon ,  Karolina Safarzynska ,  Alessandro Taberna ,  Mariësse A. E. van Sluisveld ,  Liz Verbeek ,  Taoyuan Wei
Aug 2025
Policy Briefing
Aug 2025
Journal
The revised oxford principles for net zero aligned carbon offsetting
in Environmental Research Letters
Injy Johnstone ,  Myles Allen ,  Kaya Axelsson ,  Ben Caldecott ,  Nick Eyre ,  Samuel Fankhauser ,  Thomas Hale ,  Cameron Hepburn ,  Conor Hickey ,  Stuart Jenkins ,  Radhika Khosla ,  Stephen Lezak ,  Alison Smith ,  Stephen M. Smith ,  Audrey Wagner
Aug 2025
Journal
A method to identify positive tipping points to accelerate low-carbon transitions and actions to trigger them
in Sustainability Science
Timothy M. Lenton ,  Thomas W. R. Powell ,  Steven R. Smith ,  Frank W. Geels ,  Floor Alkemade ,  Martina Ayoub ,  Pete Barbrook-Johnson ,  Scarlett Benson ,  Fenna Blomsma ,  Chris A. Boulton ,  Joshua E. Buxton ,  Sara M. Constantino ,  Sibel Eker ,  Kai Greenlees ,  Thomas Homer‑Dixon ,  Kelly Levin ,  Michael B. Mascia ,  Femke Nijsse ,  Ilona M. Otto ,  Viktoria Spaiser ,  Simon Sharpe ,  Talia Smith
Aug 2025
Press Release
Aug 2025
Journal
United Nations Environment Assembly attendees underestimate public willingness to contribute to climate action
in communications earth & environment
Ximeng Fang ,  Joshua Ettinger ,  Stefania Innocenti
Aug 2025
Journal
From chambers to echo chambers: quantifying polarization with a second-neighbor approach applied to Twitter’s climate discussion
in Journal of Complex Networks
Blas Kolic ,  Fabián Aguirre-López ,  Sergio Hernández-Williams ,  Guillermo Garduño-Hernández
Jul 2025
INET Working Paper
No. 2025-06 - Systems thinking in UK environmental policy making
Pete Barbrook-Johnson ,  Domenica Cox ,  Alexandra S. Penn
Jul 2025
Journal
Economic models and frameworks to guide climate policy
in Oxford Review of Economic Policy
Cameron Hepburn ,  Matthew C. Ives ,  Sam Loni ,  Penny Mealy ,  Pete Barbrook-Johnson ,  J. Doyne Farmer ,  Nicholas Stern ,  Joseph Stiglitz
Jul 2025
INET Working Paper
Jul 2025
Report
The UK State of Carbon Dioxide Removal
Christopher Lomax ,  Stephen M. Smith ,  Rob Bellamy ,  Astha Wagle
View All Related Publications

Who's Involved