How can we make the transition to a sustainable and desirable future?

Economics & Policy for Sustainability Panel Debate

‘How can we make the transition to a sustainable and desirable future?’

Join five world-leading sustainability thinkers to explore the changes needed to achieve an economy that works for people and the planet. Speakers will include Bob Costanza, founding Editor-in-Chief of Ecological Economics and Solutions; Ida Kubiszewski, Senior Lecturer at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University; Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, co-authors of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better; and Lindsay Stringer, Professor in Environment and Development at the University of Leeds.

The event will be chaired by Dan O’Neill, Lecturer in Ecological Economics at the University of Leeds, and co-author of Enough Is Enough.

Biographies

Bob Costanza is Professor and Chair in Public Policy at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. His transdisciplinary approach integrates the study of humans and the rest of nature to address research, policy and management issues at multiple time and space scales, from small watersheds to the global system. He is co-founder and past president of the International Society for Ecological Economics and founding editor in chief of Ecological Economics and Solutions. He is author or co-author of over 500 articles and 27 books and has been named one of ISI’s Highly Cited Researchers since 2004. More than 300 interviews and reports on his work have appeared in various popular media.

Ida Kubiszewski is a Senior Lecturer at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. She is the managing editor of Solutions and a co-founder and former-managing editor of the Encyclopedia of Earth. She is also is a climate change negotiator for the country of the Dominican Republic, following adaptation and loss & damage. She was a delegate at the 19th through 21st Conference of Parties (COP19 in Warsaw 2013; COP20 in Lima 2014; and COP21 in Paris 2015).

Kate Pickett is Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York, and the University's Champion for Research on Justice and Equality. She was a National Institute for Health Research Career Scientist from 2007-2012. She co-authored (with Richard Wilkinson) the best-selling book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better and is a co-founder of The Equality Trust. She is a Fellow of the RSA and of the UK Faculty of Public Health.

Richard Wilkinson is Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham. He played a formative role in research on the social determinants of health and on the tendency for more unequal societies to have a higher prevalence of a wide range of health and social problems. His work has been the subject of two documentaries – The Great Leveller (1996 Channel 4 Equinox series) and The Divide, (2016). With Kate Pickett he co-authored The Spirit Level (winner of the 2011 Political Studies Association Publication of the Year Award and the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas Prize) and co-founded The Equality Trust. He received Solidar’s Silver Rose Award and the Irish Cancer Society’s Charles Cully Memorial medal.

Lindsay Stringer is Professor in Environment and Development at the University of Leeds. She is a systems researcher interested in livelihood-environment relations and stakeholder engagement in environmental governance. In 2013, she received a Philip Leverhulme Prize for her work on sustainability in drylands. She was Director of the Sustainability Research Institute from 2011-2014. She is currently Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Africa Regional Assessment; Lead Author on the IPBES Land Degradation and Restoration Assessment; and chairs the CGIAR Dryland Systems Independent Task Force. She has published more than 100 journal papers.

Dan O’Neill (Chair) is a Lecturer in Ecological Economics at the University of Leeds, and the Leader of the Economics and Policy for Sustainability Research Group. His research focuses on the changes that would be needed to achieve a sustainable economy within planetary boundaries, and the relationships between resource use and human well-being. He is co-author (with Rob Dietz) of the best-selling book Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources, which has been made into a short documentary film.

Directions to the School of Earth and Environment

The SEE Seminar Room 8.119 is located behind reception in the School of Earth and Environment which is situated off Cromer Road, behind Leeds Students' Union. For those of you unfamiliar with the campus, directions to the School can be found here: http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/contact/find-us/ .