Professor E.J. Milner-Gulland and Professor Sir Charles Godfray discuss our relationship with nature, how it relates to the Covid-19 pandemic, and what we need to do differently in the future. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected both wildlife and our relationship to it. This includes calls to ban the wildlife trade, highlighting the relationship between conservation and public health, and what became of the “2020 biodiversity super-year”. Join Professor E.J. Milner-Gulland, Lead Researcher of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade and Professor Sir Charles Godfray, Director of the Oxford Martin School as they discuss how wider economic shocks have affected the wildlife trade, particularly in Africa, and how to fulfil the bold targets for nature recovery (in the UK and globally). And how can Oxford contribute, both practically through its operations and through research and educational activities.

Oxford Martin School: Public Lectures and Seminars

Resetting our relationship with nature in a post-COVID world

In this recorded talk, Professor Doyne Farmer and Maria del Rio-Chanona talk about their new paper on supply and demand shocks, and the impacts on society, resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented impact on societies around the world. As governments mandate social distancing practices and instruct non-essential businesses to close to slow the spread of the outbreak, there is significant uncertainty about the effect such measures will have on lives and livelihoods. While demand for specific sectors such as healthcare has skyrocketed in recent months, other sectors such as air transportation and tourism have seen demand for their services evaporate. At the same time, many sectors are experiencing issues on the supply-side, as governments curtail the activities of non-essential industries. Which industries will suffer most from demand-side or supply-side shocks resulting from the pandemic? Which workers are most of risk of unemployment or reduced wage income? Who will be the winners and losers? Professor Doyne Farmer and Maria del Rio-Chanona will talk about their recent paper which estimated these shocks would threaten around 22% of the US economy's GDP, jeopardise 24% of jobs and reduce total wage income by 17% - while the potential impacts are a multiple of what was experienced during the global financial crisis, and perhaps comparable to the Great Depression. Aggressive fiscal and monetary policies are needed to minimise the impact of these shocks but the avoidance of endangering public health must be the priority. This talk is in conjunction with The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy.

Supply and demand shocks in the COVID-19 pandemic: an industry and occupation perspective

In this talk, Professor Chris Adam, Professor of Development Economics looks beyond the public health aspects of the pandemic to examine the medium-term macroeconomic adjustment challenge confronting domestic policy-makers and international donors. When the Covid-19 pandemic emerged, most of sub‑Saharan Africa went into lockdown. What happens next for the pandemic across Africa remains uncertain, but the combination of domestic lockdowns and the spill-over from the global recession means immediate and severe economic hardship. Prof Chris Adam will discuss epidemiological and macroeconomic models to calibrate the scale of the combined shock to a representative low-income African economy and to show how alternative policy options for slowing transmission of Covid-19 impact on public revenue, and on GDP in the short run, and hence shape the path to recovery. Noting that the first lockdown, however costly, does not by itself eliminate the likelihood of a re-emergence of the epidemic, he will then lay out the agenda for key macroeconomic and public finance policies to sustain recovery, growth, and poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa. This talk is in partnership with The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy.

After the lockdown: macroeconomic adjustment to the Covid-19 pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa

Professor David Vines, Professor of Economics at INET Oxford, discusses the need for international cooperation to support emerging economies after the covid-19 crisis. The Covid crisis has caused the greatest collapse in economic activity since 1720. Some advanced countries have mounted a massive fiscal response, both to pay for disease-fighting action and to preserve the incomes of firms and workers until the economic recovery is underway. But there are many emerging market economies which have been be prevented from doing what is needed by their high existing levels of public debt and - especially - by the external financial constraints which they face. Professor David Vines, Professor of Economics at INET Oxford, discusses that there is a need for international cooperation to allow such countries to undertake the kind of massive fiscal response that all countries now need, and that many advanced countries have been able to carry out. So far such cooperation has been notably lacking; the contrast with what happened in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008 is very striking. The necessary cooperation needs to be led by the Group of Twenty, or G20, just as happened in 2008-9 since the G20 brings together the leaders of the world’s most important economies. This cooperation must also involve a promise of international financial support from the International Monetary Fund since otherwise international financial markets might take fright at the large budget deficits and current account deficits which will emerge, creating fiscal crises and currency crises and so causing such expansionary policies which need to be brought to an end.

Global macroeconomic cooperation in response to the Covid-19 pandemic

Professor Beata Javorcik, Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, discusses the recent developments in international trade and the link between trade finance and resilience of trade flows ready for a post-COVID world

Globalisation in the post-COVID world

Paul Clarke, Ocado's Chief Technology Officer, will focus on the disruptive ingredients and recipes at the heart of Ocado's ongoing journey of self-disruption and reinvention.

Recipes for transforming food production and beyond

For this year's James Martin Memorial Lecture, Sir Paul Nurse will consider some of the fundamental ideas of biology with the aim of identifying principles that define living organisms.

What is life?

Can every doctor understand health statistics? Gerd Gigerenzer will describe the efforts towards this goal, a few successes, but also the steadfast forces that undermine doctors’ ability to understand and act on evidence.

Better doctors, better patients, better decisions: Risk literacy in health

Globally, renewable energy has a foot in the door. But significant challenges remain. Will we be able to execute on the rapid deployment of zero carbon energy required to meet a 1.5C future? This presentation highlights the major challenges and provides some early insights on how we might tackle these significant societal issues.

Powering the future: switching on the renewables

Professor Hall will share experiences of establishing long-term plans for sustainable infrastructure in many countries around the world. One estimate suggests that $2.3trillion was invested in infrastructure worldwide last year. That vast investment has provided roads, power plants, mobile phone networks, dams and recycling plants. Whether those investments have been sustainable is questionable. As well as providing essential services that people need, infrastructure too often locks in carbon emissions, fragments habitats and opens them up for exploitation, appropriates land and exacerbates inequalities. In many respects, choices about infrastructure investment are a remarkable point of leverage, when the future course of development is set, literally, in concrete.Too often these decisions are subject to political patronage, rent seeking and worse. This lecture will examine the many impacts that infrastructure can have on sustainable development, for better or for worse.

Road to somewhere? Resilient infrastructure for sustainable development

Lord Sumption will discuss the impact on our constitution and political system of the referendum of 2016 and its aftermath.

British politics after Brexit: reflections on the last three years and the next fifty

Daniel Susskind discusses ideas from his new book 'A World Without Work' New technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines.In the past, such fears have been misplaced, and many economists maintain that they remain so today. Yet in A World Without Work, Daniel Susskind shows why this time really is different. Advances in artificial intelligence mean that all kinds of jobs are increasingly at risk. Susskind will argue that machines no longer need to reason like us in order to outperform us. Increasingly, tasks that used to be beyond the capability of computers - from diagnosing illnesses to drafting legal contracts - are now within their reach. The threat of technological unemployment is real. So how can we all thrive in a world with less work? Susskind will remind us that technological progress could bring about unprecedented prosperity, solving one of mankind's oldest problems: making sure that everyone has enough to live on. The challenge will be to distribute this prosperity fairly, constrain the burgeoning power of Big Tech, and provide meaning in a world where work is no longer the centre of our lives.

A world without work: technology, automation and how we should respond

Tapio Schneider discusses the influence of clouds on climate, and how advances in the modelling of clouds can help us predict our climate future more accurately.

Clouds and climate

n this book talk, Professor Sonia Contera will talk about how Nanotechnology is transforming medicine and the future of biology.

Nano comes to life: how nanotechnology is transforming medicine and the future of biology

William bird discusses how healthcare focused on communities and acitve lifestyles can lead to greater wellbeing. We are entering the fourth revolution of healthcare. The first revolution was Public Health with sanitation, cleaner air and better housing. The second is medical healthcare with the advancement of diagnostics and treatment with a focus on disease cure. The third is personalised health, through individual knowledge, technology, behaviour change and precision medicine. However, these revolutions have left three major problems unresolved; unsustainable healthcare, rising health inequalities and climate change driven by unsustainable living. So, we enter the fourth revolution in healthcare which builds on the previous three. This is based on communities rather than individuals, supporting a sustainable active lifestyle, eating local produce and using culture, art and contact with nature to create purpose and connections to each other, leading to greater resilience and wellbeing. It is a revolution when Smart Cities become central to the delivery of health and when advanced technology becomes almost invisible encouraging a lifestyle closer rather than further from nature. In this talk Dr Bird will explain how we are already delivering this future and how biological changes such as chronic inflammation, epigenetics, mitochondrial dysfunction and telomere shortening can provide the scientific link between wellbeing and disease.

Why we need a fourth revolution in healthcare

Public Lectures and Seminars from the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford. The Oxford Martin School brings together the best minds from different fields to tackle the most pressing issues of the 21st century.

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Oxford Martin School: Public Lectures and Seminars

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