Past Events

This three part seminar series, exploring the latest on how sustainability challenges affect the private sector, and how business is responding, took place in May 2012. The series drew upon the 2011-2013 research and publications of Dr Michael ‘Mick’ Blowfield, Senior Research Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.
Seminars:
Seminar 1: Business in society: past, present, [...]

The Smith School welcomed Dr Simon Roberts (Associate Director, Arup) to give a talk on Arup’s 4see model.
Dr Simon Roberts Seminar Slides
Seminar Summary: Dr Roberts’ will introduce the innovative 4see modelling framework, which combines socio, economic and energy aspects of a country in order to formulate physically consistent scenarios 20 years or more into the future. A [...]

Smith School Visiting Fellow, Professor Linda Cohen, gave a talk on Climate Change Technology during her stay in Oxford in May 2012.
Seminar Summary: While innovation is critical to respond to climate challenges, relying on patents to provide incentives to invest in research may be inadequate. This seminar discussed political and legal problems in using intellectual property [...]

Smith School Visiting Fellow, Peter Lund-Thomsen, gave a talk on the rise of China and India, during his stay in May 2012.
Seminar Summary: The rise of multinational corporations based in India and China is challenging our current models of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) as “Indian” and “Chinese” approaches to SSCM are formulated in different regulatory, institutional, [...]

Together with the Centre for Corporate Reputation at the Said Business School, the Smith School welcomed David Vogel (Professor, Haas School of Business and Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley) to Oxford.
Based on his book, of the same name, David Vogel’s presentation examined the trends in the politics of consumer and environmental risk regulation [...]

SSEE Visiting Fellow, Tae-hyeong Kwon (Associate Professor, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea), gave a talk on his work in April 2012.
Seminar Summary: Two popular market support policies of renewable energy sources for electricity (RES-E) are: RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standard) and FIT (Feed-In-Tariffs). These policies intervene in RES-E markets by regulating price (FIT) or quantity (RPS) of RES-E. [...]

The Smith School welcomed Professor Dr Alex Bradshaw (Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Garching/Greifswald, Germany and Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin, Germany), who gave a talk in March 2012 on the depletion of the Earth’s mineral resources.

Seminar Summary:  Several times during the 20th century scientists and economists have expressed concern about the depletion (partial, or even total) of the Earth’s [...]

This was the third talk in the Smith School’s ‘The Economics of Biodiversity’ Seminar Series, and was given by Professor Laurent Mermet (SSEE Visiting Fellow), Tony Chappel (SSEE), Yann Laurans (EcoWhat, Paris) and Tiphaine Leménager (French Development Agency).
Seminar Summary: Tools for economic valuation of biodiversity and economic instruments for biodiversity management have been promoted for several decades now, [...]

SSEE Research Fellow, Dr Robert Metcalfe, gave a talk on his recent work in November 2011.
Seminar Summary: There has been increasing attention in academic and political circles on how to reduce people’s energy consumption. There has been some evidence that other people’s energy consumption can impact on individual energy consumption. Dr Metcalfe has been using a [...]

This was the first talk in the Smith School’s ‘The Economics of Biodiversity’ Seminar Series, in Michaelmas Term 2011; and was given by

This was the second talk in the Smith School’s ‘The Economics of Biodiversity’ Seminar Series, in Michaelmas Term 2011; and was given by Professor Tim Swanson (André Hoffmann Chair of Environmental Economics, The Graduate Institute – Geneva).
Professor Swanson Presentation Slides

‘These Young Minds’ in collaboration with the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, organized an event ‘Bridging the gap between Sustainability and the Board’ on October 20 2011. Business leaders and renowned academics participated in the event and shared their views on what makes a business environmentally sustainable and profitable.  Speakers [...]

This was the second talk in the Smith School’s ‘Gorillas in our Midst’ Seminar Series, in Michaelmas Term 2011; and was given by Nick Robins (HSBC).

Speaker Biography: Nick Robins is Head of the Climate Change Centre of Excellence at HSBC in London. The goal of the Centre is to analyse the strategic implications of climate change for [...]

This was the third talk in the Smith School’s ‘Gorillas in our Midst’ Seminar Series, in Michaelmas Term 2011; and was given by the School’s Business Fellows Jeremy Bentham, Leo Johnson and Peter Lacy. 

Seminar Summary: 
This seminar focussed on the following areas:

The Arab Spring and Sustainability
From carbon constraint to social constraint?
Entrepreneurs in action: the challenges

Smith School Visiting Fellow, James Murray, gave a talk on Peak Oil in October.
Jim Murray Presentation Slides
 Seminar Summary: The argument of Peak Oil is that production of oil, a finite non-renewable geological resource, will ultimately reach a maximum and then decline. There is no debate that this will happen, but there is disagreement about when it [...]

This was the final talk in the Smith School’s ‘Gorillas in our Midst’ Seminar Series, in Michaelmas Term 2011; and was given by Mike Peirce (University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership).
 
 

Mike Peirce Presentation Slides

Speaker Biography: Mike is Director of Strategy and Communications at CPSL. In his six years at CPSL, he has led a number of CPSL’s [...]

This was the last seminar in the The Economics of Biodiversity: Practical Solutions or Esoteric Diversions? Series, which took place in Michaelmas Term 2011.
Speaker: Dr Laura Rival (University Lecturer, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford).
Laura Rival Presentation Slides
Seminar Summary: The design of economic instruments for the protection of ecological wealth in Latin American countries [...]

This was the first talk in the Smith School’s ‘Gorillas in our Midst’ Seminar Series, in Michaelmas Term 2011; and was given by Mark Campanale (Carbon Tracker) on Wednesday 12 October 2011.

Mark Campanale Seminar Slides
Unburnable Carbon Report July 2011
Seminar Summary: Rockefeller Brothers, Growald Family Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust have funded research to investigate whether [...]

The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD)  co-hosted a series of seminars during Michaelmas Term 2011, that will discuss the economics of biodiversity. They were chaired by SSEE Visiting Fellow, Professor Laurent Mermet and Research Assistant, Tony Chappel.
Series Summary: Though they have been around for most of the twentieth century, [...]

SSEE Senior Research Fellow,  Dr Mick Blowfield, hosted a series of four seminars during Michaelmas Term 2011 discussing inconvenient questions relating to businesses and climate change.
Series Summary: Here’s a dilemma. The most beautiful creature in the room has bad breath. Do you reach for the Listerine or do you kiss them anyway?  In the climate [...]

Balliol College’s Senior Research Associate and SBS lecturer, Dr Ted Piepenbrock, recently came to the Smith School to talk on the evolution of business ecosystems.
 
Seminar Summary: How do human systems organise for sustainability? How do they balance growth and stability?  We shed light on these important questions by investigating another set of classic questions in evolutionary economics, [...]

Professor of Economics, Sir David Hendry, gave a talk at the Smith School on ‘Climate Change: Lessons for our Future from the Distant Past’ in September 2011.
Sir David Hendry Seminar Slides
Seminar Summary: We consider information from many sciences bearing on the causes and consequences of climate change, focusing on lessons from past mass extinctions of life [...]

Former SSEE Research Assistant, Alex Teytelboym, gave a talk recently at the Smith School on his  recent co-authored Chapter about Low Carbon Transition, in collaboration with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Alex Teytelboym

Alex Teytelboym Presentation Slides
Seminar Summary: We argue that the problem climate change mitigation policy can be modelled by interaction of veto players (we present Russia [...]

Smith School Visiting Fellow, Professor Lavanya Rajamani, gave a special follow-up talk on the Cancun Climate Agreements, to that she did with Professor Dan Bodansky last July.
Lavanya Rajamani Seminar Slides
Seminar Summary: The Cancun Climate Agreements reached by states at COP-16, Cancun, 11 December 2010, launch, in the words of the Mexican hosts, ‘a new era of climate [...]

Mr Peter Lawrence (Senior Lecturer, Law Faculty, University of Tasmania, Australia) recently came to SSEE to give a talk on Human Rights, Future Generations and Climate Change, with Research Fellow Dr Chuks Okereke acting as chair.
Peter Lawrence Seminar Slides
Seminar Summary: Climate change imperils the rights of future unborn generations particularly the poor.  But how can such generations have [...]

The “Concertation, Decision and Environment” research programme (CDE Programme) was launched in 1999, by the research department of the French Ministry of the Environment. Its aim is to address the stakes of the massive development of citizens’ participation in environmental decision-making, to analyse how (highly diverse) participation processes work. Like all Environmental Ministry funded research, [...]

Global food prices hit an all time high in January 2011 and food systems are changing fast…the era of cheap and easy food is over.  Appreciating this and the complex challenges and changes associated with the food sector in a more globally interconnected and environmentally aware world will benefit from learning with futures and seeking [...]

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED
This week long course is co-hosted by London Mathematical Society, EPSRC and the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.
LMS-EPSRC Short Courses aim to provide training for postgraduate students in core areas of mathematics.  Part of their success is the opportunity for students to meet other students working in related areas, as [...]

Smith School Associate Fellows, Roland Kupers and Diana Mangalagiu have been involved in a new report entitled  ‘A New Growth Path for Europe: Creating New Prospects and Jobs in the Low Carbon Economy’. Roland talked about this report at the Smith School in March.
Roland Kupers Presentation
Seminar Summary: The ‘A New Growth Path for Europe’ report shows how a shift from 20 to 30% [...]

  Michele de Nevers Presentation Slides
Summary: Many authors have written about the challenges facing climate finance: identifying new sources, raising large sums of money, transferring it efficiently and effectively and ensuring equitable and just decision-making processes.  Despite these challenges, climate finance also brings opportunities to help achieve broader development objectives, such as catalyzing the transformation to low carbon and climate resilient [...]

Richard Sykes Presentation Slides
Seminar Summary: There is a lot of academic discussion around the subject of risk and resilience, but how is this applied, if at all, in practice? Richard Sykes, a partner at PwC who leads their focus on the wider governance , risk and compliance ( GRC) agenda, presented his perspective on how [...]

Dr Gero Michel presentation slides
Seminar Summary: The presentation concentrated on Catastrophe Risk and considered related opportunities for the insurance/reinsurance industry, discussing examples of emerging risks and related concerns and providing an overview of how PPP can help increasing resilience within our industry. The presentation walked the audience through strengths and weaknesses of the insurance market. It [...]

This seminar is part of the Risk and Resilience Seminar Series.
Professor Longstaff Presentation Slides
Seminar summary: Many observers have noted that we are entering a time of higher uncertainty, with fast and strong disruptions in many systems. This has been called the New Normal. This is affecting technical systems, biological systems, economic systems, and human organizations.  This [...]

Seminar summary: Resilience is a buzzword often used, so far, however, the concept has been vague. This is a problem from an academic point of view. Without a clear definition of the concept of resilience, its analytical value as an independent or dependent variable is limited. In this talk Dr Matt Qvortrup (Academic Director at the [...]

Lord May of Oxford at the Smith School

Risk and Resilience Seminar Presentation Slides 
Seminar summary: Given that natural selection acts on individual organisms in relation to their environmental setting, it is not surprising that we understand less about how evolutionary processes shape communities and ecosystems than about individual species.  Darwin saw the evolution of cooperative behaviour in [...]

Speaker Biography: Professor Calestous Juma FRS, a national of Kenya, is an internally-recognized authority on the role of innovation in economic development. He is Professor of the Practice of International Development and Director of the Science, Technology, and Globalization Project at Harvard Kennedy School.  He is a former Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological [...]

This seminar is part of the Risk and Resilience Seminar Series hosted at the Smith School in Hilary Term 2011.
Tom Downing Presentation Slides
Seminar summary: This presentation reported on the challenges at two levels where the Global Climate Adaptation Partnership has active engagements. At the regional and project level, the African Development Bank is implementing its [...]

General Meir Elran (Institute for National Security Studies(INSS), Tel Aviv University) hosted a seminar on ‘Societal resilience, in the context of counterterrorism’.

This seminar was the last of the Risk and Resilience Seminar Series hosted at the Smith School in Hilary Term 2011.

Enrique Penalosa Seminar Slides
Seminar Summary: Enrique Penalosa (the former Mayor of Bogotá and currently the President of the Board of ITDP, New York) gave a talk about how inequality produces urban design problems and how urban design can construct equality and inclusion. Underdevelopment has some advantages: one can learn from the mistakes and successes of more advanced societies. [...]

 This seminar is part of the Risk and Resilience Seminar Series hosted at the Smith School in Hilary Term 2011.

 
Katrina Brown Presentation Slides
Seminar summary: Resilience seemingly offers a set of ideas by which sustainability can be understood in linked social ecological systems. It is currently being used in many different fora and policy proclamations and [...]

Hilary Term 2011
Summary: This seminar series investigated how organisations are attempting to manage risk and search for resilience.  While resilience is often cited as an objective by government and CEOs, there remains much confusion about what this actually means and how it can be put into practice.  We explored the interface between catastrophic, emerging and systemic [...]

The Environmental Law Discussion Group is a forum for bringing together faculty and students from the law school as well as from other departments University-wide. The Group met four times in Hilary Term 2011, to seek to provoke thought and debate on important issues in the area of environmental law and policy. This was the [...]

The Environmental Law Discussion Group is a forum for bringing together faculty and students from the law school as well as from other departments University-wide. The Group will meet four times in Hilary Term 2011, and seeks to provoke thought and debate on important issues in the area of environmental law and policy.

Harro van Asselt

Harro [...]

The Environmental Law Discussion Group is a forum for bringing together faculty and students from the law school as well as from other departments University-wide. This seminar was the second in a series of four.
We suggest reading the following as the discussion at the seminar was based on its content:
Carbon Capture and Storage – An Environmental [...]

The Environmental Law Discussion Group is a forum for bringing together faculty and students from the law school as well as from other departments University-wide. The Group will meet four times in Hilary Term 2011, and seeks to provoke thought and debate on important issues in the area of environmental law and policy.
Speaker: Anthony Crean [...]

The Environmental Law Discussion Group is a forum for bringing together faculty and students from the law school as well as from other departments University-wide. The Group met four times in Hilary Term 2011, to seek to provoke thought and debate on important issues in the area of environmental law and policy.
This year, the speakers [...]

The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment recently hosted a seminar taken by Mr Anthony Goldbloom (CEO, Kaggle) on Data Modelling Competitions.
Data Modelling Competitions Slides

Summary: Data modelling competitions allow researchers and companies to post their problem and have it scrutinised by the world’s data scientists. Since the solution to many of today’s pressing problems rely on data-driven [...]

Tuesday 26th October 2010; 16:00-17:00
The Smith School recently hosted a seminar by Dr Joerg Friedrichs  (Department of International Development and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford) on the theme Peak Oil – What if? Social and Political Consequences of Disruptive Energy Scarcity.
Joerg Friedrichs Seminar Slides
Summary: Peak oil theorists predict an impending terminal decline [...]

The Smith School hosted a seminar on Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change, taken by Mr Adam Kahane (Partner, Reos Partners).
Summary: The two methods most frequently employed to solve our toughest social problems—relying on violence and aggression, or submitting to endless negotiation and compromise—are fundamentally flawed. This is because the seemingly [...]

The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and Environmental Change Institute (ECI) is co-hosting a series of four seminars during the Michaelmas Term 2010 on the theme of Incongruence: Climate change and business’ challenge – an in-depth look. This was the first of the series. 

Incongruence Seminar 1 Slides
For those who missed the first seminar, a video [...]

The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and Environmental Change Institute (ECI) is co-hosting a series of four seminars during the Michaelmas Term 2010 on the theme of Incongruence: Climate change and business’ challenge – an in-depth look. This was the second in the series. 
For those who missed this seminar, please see above for the slides and [...]

The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and Environmental Change Institute (ECI) is co-hosting a series of four seminars during the Michaelmas Term 2010 on the theme of Incongruence: Climate change and business’ challenge – an in-depth look. This is the third in the series.

Incongruence Seminar 3 Slides
For those who missed this seminar, please see above [...]

The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and Environmental Change Institute (ECI) co-hosted a series of four seminars during the Michaelmas Term 2010 on the theme of Incongruence: Climate change and business’ challenge – an in-depth look. This is the last in the series.
Incongruence Seminar 4 Slides

For those who missed this seminar, please view the video [...]

The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and Environmental Change Institute (ECI) co-hosted a series of four seminars during the Michaelmas Term 2010 on the theme of Incongruence: Climate change and business’ challenge – an in-depth look.
The Incongruence seminars were presented by Dr Mick Blowfield, senior research fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and [...]

15th and 16th July 2010
The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and Taiwo Adewole and Associates, Nigeria co-hosted a Waste Management event in Oxford this July.
The event took the form of a two day workshop-style conference plus site visit.
Studies in urban public services have consistently identified solid waste management (SWM) as one of the major problems [...]

Wednesday 14th July 2010
Professor Dan Bodansky and Professor Lavanya Rajamani delivered insightful presentations that stimualted much discussion amongst attendees ‘post Copenhagen and looking ahead to Cancun’.
Professor Dan Bodansky (Lincoln Professor of Law, Ethics and Sustainability, Arizona State University)
 “The Road from Copenhagen”
Summary: Professor Bodansky’s talk explored the Copenhagen negotiating process, in particular why it was so [...]

Wednesday 12th May (16.00 – 17.00) Seminar Ended
David Banister (Director of the Transport Studies Unit, OUCE)
Seminar Slides
Report by Doctor Christian Carey (SSEE)
Professor David Banisters talk was split into two parts. The first part presented the current drivers behind transport planning: transport as a derived demand; and minimising generalised costs of travel. Professor Banister argued that [...]

Tuesday 11 May 2010 (14.30-15.45)
Johan Eliasch Presentation
Johan Eliasch, the author of Climate Change: Financing Global Forests (an independent report commissioned by the UK government) visits the University of Oxford to present a seminar on this vitally important issue. Johan’s seminar assesses the impact of global forest loss on climate change and explores the future role of forests in the international [...]

Thursday 3rd June (16.00 – 17.00)
Tim Johnson (Director, Aviation Environmental Federation)
Will there be room for Aviation Presentation
Summary: With demand for aviation set to grow significantly over the coming decades, does the associated growth in emissions challenge our ability to achieve a low carbon future? A recent report by the Committee on Climate Change suggests that, taking into [...]

Tuesday 1st June (16.00 – 17.00)
Professor Andrew McNaughton (Chief Engineer, High Speed Rail 2 Limited)
High Capacity and High Speed Travel Seminar
Summary: High Speed Rail has been developed successfully in Europe and Asia to enable a step change in passenger journey times and reliability over conventional rail and provide a genuine alternative to short haul air and [...]

Tuesday 25th May (16.00 – 17.00)
Mark Swan (Director Airspace Policy, Civil Aviation Authority)
Summary: This seminar will start by questioning two of the underlying principles of conventional transport planning on travel as a derived demand and on travel cost minimisation. It suggests that the existing paradigm ought to be more flexible, particularly if the sustainable mobility agenda [...]

Low Carbon Mobility Seminar Series Poster
Research shows that meeting future mobility demands rests on the rapid and immediate diversification of transport energy sources and transport technologies.
Explore the solutions:
Thursday 3rd June 2010
“Will there be room for aviation in a low carbon future?”
Tim Johnson, Director, Aviation Environmental Federation
The seminar will look at the past and future growth [...]

Monday 10 May 2010 (17:00-18:00) seminar ended
Leonardo Garrido (Coordinator for Modeling Social and Economic impacts of Earthquakes)
Summary: Attempts to measure social and economic impacts of adverse natural events have yielded disappointing results to researchers and policy makers.  Modeling approaches based on mainstream economic theories have failed to consider the complex interactions that exist among physical and geographic characteristics, structural [...]

Wednesday 7th April 2010 (16:00-17:00)
Eric Beinhocker, Executive Director of the Global Green Growth Institute, a Senior Fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute, and the author of The Origin of Wealth

‘Complexity Economics and Climate Change’ Slides
Summary:  Even prior to the financial crisis, orthodox economic theory based on neoclassical principles was increasingly being called into question.  Mounting [...]

Monday 26 April 2010 (16:00-17:00)
Rosemary De Vos (European Representative of the International SeaKeepers Society, Fort Lauderdale, and an Associate of J. Ottman Consulting, New York)
Summary: Ensuring that future generations have the opportunity to benefit from bio-diverse, vital oceans needs global attention now.  An opportunity exists to begin bridging the gap between diverse constituencies, who are [...]

25 March
EVENT ENDED Business and Climate Change Conference
The Smith School co-hosted a half-day conference with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Middlesex University, and the University of East Anglia.  The conference discussed the question: ’What business is doing about climate change?’
Speakers at the conference included Will Day (Chair, Sustainable Development Commission); Wanda Kim (Managing Director, Head of Environmental [...]

16 March,
Speakers Dr. Roland Mohr, Managing Director of Infraserv Hoechst and Prof. Hannes Utikal, Provadis School of International Management and Technology analysed the impact of climate policy on strategy development at a large chemical and pharmaceutical business park.
External pressures have a significant impact on the formation of climate strategies and are having to be taken into account [...]

The Smith School and Oxford Law co hosted the Environment Law Discussion Group seminar series.  A forum for students and the wider audience to listen to presentations and debate important issues in the area of environmental law and policy.
Convenor Eloise Scotford writes:
“The end of Hilary term saw the end of the Environmental Law Discussion Group seminar series – [...]

Oxfordshire business leaders, key environmental academics and high level Government representatives came together on 3rd March 2010 for a ½ day presentation and workshop co-hosted by Oxfordshire County Council and the Smith School to discuss “Developing the clean tech economy in Oxfordshire: a low carbon future for a world-class economy”.
Featured speakers included Professor Sir David [...]

Featured speakers included Professor Sir David King, Director of the Smith School; Trevor Graham, Head of Sustainability for the city of Malmo, Sweden; Councillor Keith Mitchell (Leader of Oxfordshire County Council) and Dr Barbara Hammond, Environment Director, SEEDA.

Presentations were followed by discussions about how senior business and political leaders in Oxfordshire can help each other respond successfully to the challenges and opportunities created by climate change.

Updated: 10th March 2010

4 March 2010, 5.30-6.30pm
Professor Pasquale Gagliardi, Secretary-General, Giorgio Cini Foundation, Professor of Sociology of Organization at the Faculty of Political Sciences, Catholic University, Milan.
In his lecture Professor Pasquale analysed the relationship between thinking and experience in the production of knowledge.  He then went on to hypothsise the distinctive traits of an ‘empowering theory’. More information

E P Abraham [...]

Making connections through art on how we live and relate to a fragile planet. Looking at art/science collaborations and work made in the deserts of Antarctica and Nevada.
Chris Drury, Land Artist
Tuesday January 19, 5-6pm
Seminar Room, SSEE, Hayes House, 75 George Street, Oxford, OX1 2BQ
Chris Drury seminar