Distinguished economist Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta will speak about the policies and practices humanity needs to adopt to stop destroying nature

The author of a landmark UK report calling for radical change in how we measure economic success to protect our most precious asset, nature, will give the first Climate Crisis Lecture at St John’s College, Cambridge, on 21 October 2024.

The lecture by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta is titled ‘Economic Possibilities in the Anthropocene’ – the Anthropocene being a term to describe the time during which humans have had a significant impact on the Earth’s climate and ecosystems.

Professor Edward Tipper, a St John’s Fellow and Chair of the College’s Climate Crisis Committee, which is organising the event, said: “St John's College is pleased to demonstrate its serious commitment to meeting the great challenge of our generation with its first Climate Crisis Lecture. We are pleased that it will be given by a Fellow who is among the most distinguished contributors to both research and policy in this field.”

Sir Partha, who is Emeritus Professor, Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John’s, was commissioned by the UK Treasury in 2019 to produce The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. Published in 2021, the report showed that humanity is destroying its most precious asset, nature, and called for changes in how we think, act and measure economic success to protect and enhance our prosperity and the natural world.

Sir Partha’s lecture will be about complementarities among nature’s supply of goods and services, and about how they inform the ways in which we should rely on them. He will argue the continual neglect of these complementarities has led to our contemporary ecological overreach. He will point to policies and practices – at both global and local levels – that will be needed if we are to reduce our overreach to zero.

The lecture, which is being held thanks to the generosity of donors through the College's Annual Fund, will be introduced by Heather Hancock, Master of St John’s. It will be followed by a discussion featuring a distinguished panel of academics: Professor Laura Diaz Anadon, Professor Sir David King and Professor Richard Lazarus.

Professor Diaz Anadon is the chaired Professor of Climate Change Policy, Director of the Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance, and a Fellow of St John’s. Among other roles, she is a Lead Author in the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on the Board of Directors of Cambridge Enterprise Ltd, and elected Vice-Chair of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change.

Professor King has been Head of Cambridge University Department of Chemistry and was the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, 2000-2007. He is founder of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge and Chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group – an independent global scientific body – and an Honorary Fellow of St John’s and Downing Colleges. This year he has also contributed to the multi-authored urgent call to action, ‘Earth at Risk’, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

Professor Lazarus, who is a Visiting Beaufort Fellow at St John’s this Michaelmas Term, is the Charles Stebbins Fairchild Professor of Law at Harvard University, where his teaching and scholarship includes environmental law and natural resources law, and Supreme Court advocacy. He was principal author of Deep Water – The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling – the 2011 report to the President of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Commission.

Sir Partha’s most recent honours include being named the 2022 UN Environment Programme Champions of the Earth Laureate for Science and Innovation, and in being awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Management category in 2023. On 19 September 2024 he was awarded a Citation Laureate in Economics by the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate,

His forthcoming new book On Natural Capital. The Value of the World Around Us will be published by Penguin in May 2025.

The event will feature a poster display in Central Hall in the Old Divinity School from 4.30pm, showcasing some of the activities underway at St John’s to address the climate crisis. This will include the research undertaken by three St John’s undergraduates who took part in a paid summer pilot scheme. Also funded by College donors via the Annual Fund, the research is by Nathaniel Ostle, Tomas Davis and Alana Rogan.

Nathaniel’s research is called Enhancing an insect for waste conversion; Tomas’s is Carbon storage in basalt, and Alana’s study is about Climate impact reduction in dairy farming. All three students are supervised by St John’s academics.

Audience members should arrive by 5.05pm for a prompt 5.15pm start on Monday 21 October in the Main Lecture Theatre, St John's College Old Divinity School. Tickets are free but booking is essential. Register for your tickets.

^{Banner image credit: Karsten Würth on Unsplash.}

Published 20/9/2024

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