Earth Day, celebrated annually on April 22, is a global event dedicated to raising awareness and promoting action for environmental protection and sustainability. Established in 1970, Earth Day serves as a reminder of our shared responsibility to safeguard our planet for future generations. It brings together millions of people from diverse backgrounds to engage in activities that educate, inspire, and mobilize communities around pressing environmental issues, from climate change and pollution to biodiversity conservation and sustainable practices.

SSRN has joined the movement by creating an Earth Day Special Topic Hub that highlights early-stage research addressing critical global challenges such as climate change, pollution, deforestation, and habitat loss. This special topic hub presents insights from many disciplines that may inform the ongoing conversation on advancing Earth Day efforts by providing the scientific foundation needed to understand environmental challenges and develop effective solutions.

Below is a selection of the top downloaded papers from the Earth Day Special Topic Hub from 2024 to the present:

• A Multitemporal Snapshot of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Israel-Gaza Conflict by Benjamin Neimark (Queen Mary University of London), Patrick Bigger (The Climate and Community Project), Frederick Otu-Larbi (Lancaster University), & Reuben Larbi (Lancaster University)
  
• Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths by David Arkush (Public Citizen) & Donald Braman (George Washington University)
  
• When Insurers Exit: Climate Losses, Fragile Insurers, and Mortgage Markets by Parinitha Sastry (Columbia Business School), Ishita Sen (Harvard Business School), & Ana-Maria Tenekedjieva (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System)
  
• On the Importance of Assurance in Carbon Accounting by Florian Berg (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Jaime Oliver Huidobro (Clarity AI Europe S.L.), & Roberto Rigobon (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
  
• A Proto-Standard for Carbon Accounting and Auditing using the E-Liability Method by Karthik Ramanna (University of Oxford), Lauren Holloway (E-liability Institute), Max Israelit (E-liability Institute), Chloe Wenye Zhang (Yale School of Management), & Robert S. Kaplan (Harvard Business School)
  

To read more research on Earth Day, view other papers here.