Nitro fumes need to be slashed by a third to meet sustainability targets: Study

Nitrogen emissions worldwide would need to be reduced by one-third to meet the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, according to a study.

Nitrogen is critical for food security and environmental sustainability. However, its excess or inefficient use, causing nitrogen pollution, is a major driver of environmental degradation and public health risks, and can intensify climate change.

The element, therefore, can be both an enabler and a constraint in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), making its management crucial for progress, researchers, including those from Zhejiang University in China and Austria's International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, said.

"Meeting balanced and achievable objectives by 2030 will require reducing global nitrogen emissions by one-third. Such reductions could generate up to $291 billion in combined economic and environmental benefits," the authors wrote in the study published in the journal One Earth. The authors "introduce an SDG-driven framework to evaluate nitrogen management under sustainable shared socioeconomic pathways (climate change scenarios)."

According to the framework, an average index score will reflect overall national or regional performance in nitrogen emissions and management, with higher values indicating a stronger progress toward relevant targets, the researchers said.

A score above 60 might reflect a balanced progress towards nitrogen-linked sustainability targets, and more than 75 as being possible for meeting the targets by the 2030 deadline, they said. The study calculated the global average score was 66 in 2020.

A global average of 75, with individual scores exceeding 60, would make it possible to meet balanced and achievable targets, the researchers said.

To achieve this, global nitrogen emissions would need to be reduced by 50 million tonnes by 2030 -- 32 per cent of 2020 levels, they said.