'How can we build the sustainable economy?' with Dieter Helm & Dimitri Zenghelis

Past Event

Date
 02 November 2023, 5:00pm - 6:15pm

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

Event Recording:

What would the sustainable economy look like? What would it take to live within our environmental means?

These are questions posed by Professor Sir Dieter Helm, in a forthcoming book: Legacy: How to Build the Sustainable Economy. It explores the key features of properly maintaining different types of capital (human-derived and natural), why polluters should pay, and why the current generation should fund the necessary maintenance of our natural assets. This book explains the steps that are needed to make our economies truly sustainable and highlights the feebleness of current approaches to net zero and biodiversity loss and why we are not meeting our duties to future generations.

Professor Helm, will debate the challenges ahead with Dimitri Zenghelis, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, LSE, and Advisor to the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge, in a discussion chaired by the Oxford Martin School Director, Professor Sir Charles Godfray.

Helm Dieter Use

Professor Sir Dieter Helm
Professor of Economic Policy, University of Oxford

Sir Dieter Helm is Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Economics at New College, Oxford. From 2012 to 2020, he was Independent Chair of the Natural Capital Committee, providing advice to the government on the sustainable use of natural capital.. In the New Year 2021 Honours List, Dieter was awarded a knighthood for services to the environment, energy and utilities policy.

He has written many books, most recently Net Zero (September 2020, William Collins) in which he addresses the action we all need to take to tackle the climate emergency. He is currently writing a new book on The Sustainable Economy.

His other books include: Green & Prosperous Land (2019, William Collins), Burn Out: The Endgame for Fossil Fuels (2017), The Carbon Crunch: Revised and Updated (2015) and Natural Capital: Valuing the Planet (2016), all published by Yale University Press.

Dieter has provided extensive advice to UK and European governments, including The Cost of Energy Review for the UK government in October 2017 and for the European Commission in preparing the Energy Roadmap 2030. He served both as a special advisor to the European Commissioner for Energy and as Chairman of the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on the Roadmap. He also assisted the Polish government in its presidency of the European Union Council.

Dieter is Honorary Vice President of the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust.

Dimitri zenghelis senior associate

Dimitri Zenghelis
Visiting Senior Fellow, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change

Dimitri Zenghelis is Special Advisor to the Wealth Economy project, which he also co-founded, centred at Cambridge University. He is also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics. He was until recently Head of Policy at the Grantham Research Institute at the LSE and Acting Chief Economist for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. He is a Special Advisor to the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and a member of the Productivity Institute.

Previously, he headed the Stern Review Team at the Office of Climate Change, London, and was a senior economist on the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, commissioned by the then Chancellor Gordon Brown. Before working on climate change, Dimitri was Head of Economic Forecasting at HM Treasury.

Charles Godfray

Professor Sir Charles Godfray
Director, Oxford Martin School

Professor Sir Charles Godfray was appointed Director of the Oxford Martin School on 1 February 2018.

Professor Godfray is a population biologist with broad interests in the environmental sciences and has published in fundamental and applied areas of ecology, evolution and epidemiology. He is interested in how the global food system will need to change and adapt to the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, and in particular in the concept of sustainable intensification, and the relationship between food production, ecosystem services and biodiversity. In 2017 he was knighted for services to scientific research and for scientific advice to government.

As well as leading the School, Professor Godfray is also a lead researcher of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food and the Oxford Martin Restatements project, a new approach to providing succinct summaries of scientific evidence around highly contentious topics.