The London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership 2

The London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership 2 will train the next generation of environmental scientists through a consortium of research organisations across the capital. This matters because the UK faces pressing environmental challenges—from climate change and biodiversity loss to pollution and natural resource management—that require skilled researchers to address. Without sustained investment in postgraduate training, the pipeline of experts needed to understand and tackle these problems would shrink. The partnership fills a critical gap by providing structured, high-quality doctoral training that individual universities cannot deliver alone. If successful, this programme will produce dozens of PhD graduates equipped to work across academia, government agencies, and industry. Their research could improve how we monitor air and water quality, predict extreme weather events, manage fisheries, or restore degraded ecosystems. Many of these outcomes quietly underpin public health, infrastructure planning, and food security. This is primarily a training and capacity-building initiative rather than a single research project. It funds people, not specific experiments. The fundamental science these students will pursue—from ocean circulation to soil microbiology—may not have immediate commercial applications, but it builds the knowledge base that future practical solutions depend on. Past investments in environmental PhD training have led to breakthroughs in climate modelling, flood forecasting, and conservation policy that now protect lives and livelihoods.