Henry Shue, Javier Lezaun, Thom Wetzer, Lavanya Rajamani and Steve Smith in Conversation: "Climate justice & achieving Net Zero"

Past Event

Date
 22 February 2021, 1:00pm - 2:00pm

Location
 Online

Event Recording:

This discussion in the Oxford Net Zero Series, hosted by the Oxford Martin School, turns the spotlight on the climate justice aspects of the research programme on Net Zero.

Join Oxford academics from the Department of Politics and International Relations, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, and Faculty of Law - Henry Shue, Javier Lezaun, Thom Wetzer and Lavanya Rajamani - as they discuss with the Chair, Dr Steve Smith, the equity, justice and distributive aspects of reducing and removing GHG emissions in pursuit of Net Zero.

The discussion will explore the crucial importance of (and opportunities for including) justice and distributive aspects in the framing and operationalisation of the Paris Agreement's global temperature goal and Net Zero in an unequal world.

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Professor Javier Lezaun
Director, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society (InSIS)

Javier Lezaun is Director of the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society (InSIS) and Associate Professor in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography. His work on climate change focuses on the emerging politics of greenhouse gas removal (GGR), and the development of governance arrangements capable of aligning large-scale GGR with sustainable development goals.

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Professor Lavanya Rajamani
Professor of International Environmental Law

Lavanya Rajamani is a Professor of International Environmental Law at the Faculty of Law. Lavanya specialises in the field of international environmental and climate change law. She has authored several books and articles in this field, including the ASIL prize-winning co-authored book, International Climate Change Law (OUP, 2017), and Innovation and Experimentation in the International Climate Change Regime (Hague Academy/ Receuil des Cours, 2020). She serves as Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, and has also served as a consultant and legal advisor, among others, to the UNFCCC Secretariat and Alliance of Small Island States. She was part of the UNFCCC core drafting and advisory team for the 2015 Paris Agreement.

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Professor Henry Shue
Professor Emeritus of International Relations

Henry Shue is the author of Basic Rights (1980; 40th anniversary edition with chapter on climate change and basic rights, 2020); Climate Justice: Vulnerability and Protection (2014); The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have A Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now (forthcoming in 2021); and numerous articles on international and intergenerational justice. He is Professor Emeritus of International Relations, University of Oxford; and Senior Research Fellow, Centre for International Studies, Oxford.

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Professor Thom Wetzer
Associate Professor of Law and Finance

Thom Wetzer is an Associate Professor of Law and Finance at the Faculty of Law and the Founding Director of the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. In his research, Thom explores how law and finance can be leveraged to accelerate the sustainability transition. Thom actively collaborates with policymakers around the world, including at the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the Financial Stability Board.

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Dr Steve Smith
Executive Director, Oxford Net Zero

Dr Steve Smith joins the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment from the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) where he co-led the Climate Science Team for two years. He played a key role in the legislation of the Net Zero emissions target last year, and on developing the Government's approach to greenhouse gas removal. As well as advising ministers and policy teams he oversaw several areas of climate research, including the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme, the Greenhouse Gas Removal Programme co-funded with UKRI, and understanding of carbon sources and sinks on land for the UK emissions inventory.

Before joining BEIS, Steve was Head of Science at the Committee on Climate Change. There he was involved in setting the UK's 2050 target and carbon budgets, as well as starting up the committee's work on climate adaptation. He gained a PhD in atmospheric physics from Imperial College London after studying Physics at Oxford. He is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and of the Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy.