'Our shared world: reconciling individual need and collective responsibility' - panel discussion

Past Event

Date
 26 May 2016, 6:00pm - 7:30pm

Location
 Lecture Theatre, Oxford Martin School
34 Broad Street (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets), Oxford, OX1 3BD

Event Recording:

For most of the world’s toughest challenges, there exists a tension between the needs of an individual and what is best for the common good. Income derived from fishing may be vital to one country’s economy but overfishing depletes stocks to dangerously low levels. Low income countries need to develop in order to lift people out of poverty but this increases demand for fossil fuels at a point where global efforts to reduce carbon emissions have become critically important.

Some of Oxford’s leading thinkers on how to manage global commons and shared resources come to together for a lively panel debate to address the tension between individual rationality and collective responsibility, drawing on examples from the four lectures in this term’s series.

Panellists:

  • Professor Ian Goldin, (Chair), Director, Oxford Martin School
  • Professor Richard Bailey, Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Sustainable Oceans
  • Professor Nick Eyre, Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy
  • Professor Cameron Hepburn, Co-Director, Oxford Martin Net Zero Carbon Investment Initiative
  • Professor Angela McLean, Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Diseases

Join in on Twitter #sharedworld

About the panellists

Richard Bailey is an Associate Professor in the School of Geography and the Environment, and Tutorial Fellow, and Dean, at St Catherine's College; he is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking (Oxford) and member of the Oxford Biodiversity Institute. He started off academically in geoscience, and moved in to applied physics as a post-graduate at University of London. He has previously held academic positions in Royal Holloway University of London, St John's College and the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art (University of Oxford).

Richard's current research interests are in the dynamics of natural environmental systems and in human-environment interactions, and the central themes that connect these interests are ‘sustainability’ and ‘resilience’. He uses both theoretical (analytical and numerical modelling) and empirical data analyses and is currently heavily involved in building a ‘while-system’ simulator for the development of new approaches to ocean fisheries management. He works closely with a range of governmental/non-governmental/commercial sector organizations, mostly in the EU and US.

Nick Eyre is Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Integrating Renewable Energy, a Jackson Senior Research Fellow in Energy at the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) and Oriel College. He also leads the ECI programme on Lower Carbon Futures. He is a Co-Director of the multi-university collaboration, the UK Energy Research Centre, leading its research work on energy demand. He teaches on option on energy policy on the Environmental Change and Management MSc course.

Nick has worked as a researcher, consultant and manager on energy and environmental issues since 1984. His interests focus on energy policy, especially with respect to energy demand, energy efficiency and small scale conversion and supply. He has published extensively on energy, climate, environment and transport issues. He is co-author of a book on carbon markets.

Nick worked at the Energy Saving Trust from 1999 to 2007, initially as Head of Policy and, from 2002, as Director of Strategy. He was responsible for the Trust's work on public policy issues, business development and long term business strategy. In 2001, he was seconded to the Cabinet Office, Performance and Innovation Unit, where he was a co-author of the Government's Review of Energy Policy. He led work streams on energy efficiency and long term energy scenarios.

In 1997, he wrote the first published study on how the Government's 20% carbon emission reduction target might be delivered. He managed a large European Commission programme on the external costs of energy and was lead author of the report used as the basis for the UK Government's first estimate of the social cost of carbon.

Cameron Hepburn is the Director of the Economics of Sustainability Programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and a Fellow at New College, University of Oxford. He is an expert in environmental, resource and energy economics. He has degrees in law and engineering, a doctorate in economics, and over 30 peer-reviewed publications in economics, public policy, law, engineering, philosophy, and biology.

He is involved in policy formation, including as a member of the DECC Secretary of State’s Economics Advisory Group. He has also had an entrepreneurial career, co-founding two successful businesses and investing in several other start-ups.

Cameron is a member of the Economics Advisory Group (with Lord Stern and Professor Helm) to the UK Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change. He served for almost a decade as a member of the Academic Panel, in the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department of Energy and Climate Change. He has advised governments (e.g. China, India, UK, Australia) and international institutions (e.g. OECD, UN organisations) on energy, resources and environmental policy.

Cameron began his business career with work at oil multinational Shell, law firm Mallesons and then management consultancy McKinsey & Co. Cameron is now a founder-investor in the social enterprise and clean energy sectors.

In 2006, with Alex Wyatt he co-founded Climate Bridge, a developer of clean energy projects in China and around the world, with offices in four countries. Also in 2006, with Robin Smale he co-founded Vivid Economics, a boutique economics consultancy where he has worked with private sector (and government) clients on strategy in relation to market structure and resource, energy and environmental issues.

Ian Goldin was Vice President of the World Bank (2003-2006) and prior to that the Bank's Director of Development Policy (2001-2003). He served on the Bank's senior management team and led the Bank's collaboration with the United Nations and other partners as well as with key countries. As Director of Development Policy, he played a pivotal role in the research and strategy agenda of the Bank.

From 1996 to 2001 he was Chief Executive and Managing Director of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and served as an advisor to President Nelson Mandela. He succeeded in transforming the Bank to become the leading agent of development in the 14 countries of Southern Africa. During this period, Goldin served on several Government committees and Boards, and was Finance Director for South Africa's Olympic Bid.

Previously, Goldin was Principal Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London, and Program Director at the OECD Development Centre in Paris, where he directed the Programs on Trade, Environment and Sustainable Development.

He has a BA (Hons) and a BSc from the University of Cape Town, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and an MA and Doctorate from the University of Oxford.

Goldin has received wide recognition for his contributions to development and research, including having been knighted by the French Government and nominated Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. He has published over 50 articles and 19 books, including Globalization for Development: Meeting New Challenges (Oxford University Press, 2012), Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped our World and Will Define our Future (Princeton University Press, 2011); The Economics of Sustainable Development (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Divided Nations: Why global governance is failing and what we can do about it (Oxford University Press, 2013). His two most recent books are The Butterfly Defect: How globalization creates systemic risks, and what to do about it (Princeton University Press, 2014) and an edited volume Is the planet full? (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Angela McLean is the Co-Director of the Institute of Emerging Infections and the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease. She is also Professor of Mathematical Biology in the Department of Zoology and Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College at the University of Oxford.

Professor McLean's research interests lie in the use of mathematical models to aid our understanding of the evolution and spread of infectious agents. This encompasses modelling of the dynamics of infections and immune responses within individual hosts as well as models of the spread of infections from one host to another. Her groups current research interests focus on: HIV, HCV and Influenza.

She studied mathematics at Oxford followed by a PhD in biomathematics at Imperial College, London. After a brief spell in the City she joined the Mathematical Biology Group at the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill, the returning to Oxford as a Royal Society University Research Fellow in 1990. In 1998 she became Head of Mathematical Biology at the BBSRC’s Institute for Animal Health. Returning to Oxford in 2000, she was made Professor of Mathematical Biology in 2004. She was elected to the Royal Society in 2009, and was awarded the Royal Society's Gabor Medal in 2011.