Oxford Martin School: Public Lectures and Seminars

Panel discussion on whether Globalisation can benefit the poor with Alex Gennie, Ian Goldin, Rushanara Ali MP, James Drummond and Nick Gowing. Globalisation is bound in a complex relationship with poverty. Its forces are powerful and can act to either destroy or radically improve the economic position of areas in development. Despite this, the opportunities that the phenomenon presents for development are largely underexplored and underexploited.

Dr James Martin, Founder of the Oxford Martin School and founder of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. the largest nongovernmental organization in the world devoted exclusively to research and training to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Distinguished Public Lecture. Globalization has created a more interconnected, interdependent and complex world than ever witnessed before. Whilst this openness and connectivity has brought enormous benefits, it has also increased our vulnerability and exposure to global shocks, such as the recent financial crisis. Balancing these dimensions brings significant challenges at the global, regional and local levels. As we face some of the biggest challenges of the 21st century, how equipped are global governance structures to coordinate and address issues such as climate change, trade tensions, food security and economic uncertainty? How do we resolve the inevitable strains that exist between global and national priorities in such debates? In this distinguished lecture, Mr Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, offers his perspectives on these critical issues from his distinguished career as a French political adviser, a businessman and as former European Commissioner for Trade.

Sachs argues that for the U.S. to regain sound fiscal health the country must also reform its politics. The lecture is immediately followed by a panel discussion with: Professor Valpy FitzGerald, Department of International Development, Professor Ian Goldin, Oxford Martin School (chair), Professor Peter Tufano, Said Business School, Professor Adrian Wood, Department of International Development, Professor Sir Adam Roberts, Centre for International Studies (Please note Prof Sir Adam Roberts is replacing Prof Ngaire Woods)

Dr Jill Tarter, Director, Center for SETI Research, SETI Institute gives a talk for the Oxford Martin School Seminar Series.

Professor Clive Hamilton delivers a critique of the consequentialist approach to the ethics of geoengineering, the approach that deploys assessment of costs and benefits in a risk framework to justify climatic intervention. Professor Hamilton argues that there is a strong case for preferring the natural, and that the unique and highly threatening character of global warming renders the standard approach to the ethics of climate change unsustainable. Moreover, the unstated metaphysical assumption of conventional ethical, economic and policy thinking - modernity's idea of the autonomous human subject analysing and acting on an inert external world - is the basis for the kind of "technological thinking" that lies at the heart of the climate crisis. Technological thinking both projects a systems framework onto the natural world and frames it as a catalogue of resources for the benefit of humans. Recent discoveries by Earth system science itself - the arrival of the Anthropocene, the prevalence of non-linearities, and the deep complexity of the earth's processes - hint at the inborn flaws in this kind of thinking. The grip of technological thinking explains why it has been so difficult for us to heed the warnings of climate science and why the idea of using technology to take control of the earth's atmosphere is immediately appealing. Professor Clive Hamilton is a Visiting Academic, Department of Philosophy, and Senior Visiting Research Associate, Oxford University Centre for the Environment. He is Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) and holds the newly created Vice-Chancellor's Chair at Charles Sturt University, Australia. He was the Founder and for 14 years the Executive Director of The Australia Institute, a public interest think tank. He is well known in Australia as a public intellectual and for his contributions to public policy debate. His extensive publications include writings on climate change policy, overconsumption, welfare policy and the effects of commercialisation. Recent publications include The Freedom Paradox: Towards a post-secular ethics and Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change.

Mass media serve vital roles in communication processes between science, policy and the public, and often stitch together perceptions, intentions, considerations, and actions regarding climate change. This talk will touch on salient and swirling contextual factors as well as competing journalistic pressures and norms that contribute to how issues, events and information have often become climate 'news'.

Bishop and Green led a discussion based on their recent book, "The Road From Ruin: A New Capitalism for a Big Society". Together, they will take a look at what set us on the road to the recent financial crisis, whilst also highlighting the signs to guide us back to prosperity. Matthew Bishop is US Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief of The Economist. Michael Green is a leading independent economist and writer.

The recent economic rise of China and India has attracted a great deal of attention--and justifiably so. Together, the two countries account for one-fifth of the global economy and are projected to represent a full third of the world's income by 2025. Yet, many of the views regarding China and India's market reforms and high growth have been tendentious, exaggerated, or oversimplified. This talk by leading economist Professor Bardhan will explore the challenges that both countries must overcome to become true leaders in the international economy. Bardhan's latest book 'Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay' investigates China's and India's economic reforms, each nation's pattern and composition of growth, and the problems afflicting their agricultural, industrial, infrastructural, and financial sectors. His talk will consider how these factors affect poverty, inequality, and environment, how political factors shape each country's pattern of burgeoning capitalism, and how significant poverty reduction in both countries is mainly due to domestic factors--not global integration, as most would believe. Pranab Bardhan is professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation.

Part of the School's intergrative seminar series. Delivered by Professor Patricia Hirl Longstaff, James Martin Senior Visiting Fellow, Professor, Syracuse University, Research Associate, Harvard Program on Information Resources Policy. Climate change, economic globalization, and many new levels of communication have all made many human, biological and technical systems more unpredictable. This has been called The New Normal: a time of higher uncertainty, with fast and strong disruptions in many systems. This is affecting technical systems, biological systems, economic systems, and human organizations. This has increased interest in resilience, a strategy that is often seen in systems that must operate under high uncertainty. Professor Longstaff will discuss some of the attributes of resilience that is seen in many systems and how resilience can fail. She has received funding for her interdisciplinary work from the US National Science Foundation. She has applied these concepts to community planning, human/technical systems, and business organizations. She is currently writing about the role of trust and blame in human systems that must adapt to new realities in their environments.