January 30 2025; 10:30 – 12:00 

Lee Ann Jackson

Food systems in the EU: how the EU policy landscape is transforming the agrifood sector

The lecture will analyze future EU policies and how they will be able to influence food systems worldwide. In fact, Europe is acting as a pioneer on some key issues related to the food system, designing innovative agricultural policies which will both shape the current food sector and act as a door opener for innovative policies in the rest of the world.

Lee Ann Jackson is the Head of the Agro-food Trade and Markets Division in the OECD’s Trade and Agriculture Directorate. She leads the work examining the links between policies and outcomes on food and agricultural markets. She has over 20 years of experience working in the area of trade and agriculture, including 16 years working at the WTO, where she served as the Secretary to the Committee on Agriculture, advising WTO member countries on issues related to agricultural trade policy and multilateral negotiations. She has served as a consultant for leading international organisations involved in agriculture policy and trade, including the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Consultative Group for International Agriculture Research.

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February 20 2025; 10:30 – 12:00

Ben Groom

Nature positive impacts in business organisations: the economics of biodiversity

In this lecture, Ben Groom will explain the economic value of biodiversity and natural capital. He will also analyze the financial, social and environmental consequences of investments, which should serve as guiding tools for decision-makers in designing biodiversity policies. He will discuss double materiality, i.e., the measurement of how much a company depends on natural resources and the ecosystem services they provide, as well as how much the company impacts or damages them. Moreover, the webinar will provide participants with practical case studies & research evidence, relevant to the corporate context, to understand these mechanisms in a more specific way. Two main questions will be addressed: What happens if climate and biodiversity collapse? And what actions can companies take to prevent this?

Ben Groom is currently the Dragon Capital Chair in Biodiversity Economics at the Department of Economics, University of Exeter. Between 2012 and 2020 he was a Professor of Environment and Development Economics at the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He studied a BSc in Economics at Sheffield University, an MSC in Environmental and Resource Economics at UCL, and completed his PhD in Economics at UCL in 2005 on the topic of empirical and theoretical aspects of social discounting for distant time horizons.

April 10 2025; 10:30 – 12:00

Ben Caldecott

Financing the energy transition: when and how

This lecture will explore how finance and investment influence the energy transition and, in turn, how the energy transition shapes financial decisions. It will also examine the expected trajectory of this shift and the role of corporate transition planning in supporting global decarbonization efforts.

Ben Caldecott is the founding Director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group and the Lombard Odier Associate Professor of Sustainable Finance at the University of Oxford. Ben is also the founding Director and Principal Investigator of the UK Centre for Greening Finance & Investment. He is a Visiting Professor at the Wealth Management Institute in Singapore. In November 2024 he became Chair of the International Transition Plan Network (ITPN) Advisory Group, launched at COP29. He currently serves as a Trustee of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and on the UK Climate Change Committee, as well as on DBS Bank’s Board Sustainability Committee, UK Export Finance’s Export Guarantees Advisory Council, and the SBTi Technical Council.

May 2025; 10:30 – 12:00

Teresa Domenech

Circular business model transformation: rethinking the fashion paradigm

This lecture will examine the strategies to accelerate the transition to a circular economy both at a business level and on a global scale. The impacts that the Global Circularity Protocol for Business (GCP) - whose primary aim is to address accountability and policy gaps that hinder the global scaling of circular economy practices - has on climate mitigation, resource conservation, and social equity, will also be analyzed.

Teresa Domenech is a lecturer in Industrial Ecology and the Circular Economy at the University College of London (UCL) and founder director of the UCL Circular Economy Lab and the UCL Plastic Innovation Hub. She has contributed to leading international research in the areas of sustainable industrial development, decarbonization pathways and the circular economy. Her expertise covers resource and energy implications of industrial sectors including construction (metals and cement), plastics, textiles and the bio-economy. She has also explored the resource implications (e.g., critical materials reliance) of green mobility (e.g., EV batteries) and renewable technologies. Her work also explores resource flows in cities and sustainable urban transitions.