The Carbon Trust’s Annual Lecture in November 2016 was delivered by Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, giving his perspective on addressing the defining challenges of this century: managing climate change and overcoming poverty. His opinion is that the two are inextricably linked, so that if we fail on one, we will fail on the other.

In his lecture Lord Stern explained the significance of the fact that for the first time since the aftermath of the second world war there is common agreement on a global agenda, but with greater equity than under the Bretton Woods system. However, he highlighted the urgency and scale of the challenge on addressing climate change, as well as the role that needs to be played by a different types of organisations, including the private sector, cities and development banks.

An short interview with Lord Stern and the full Annual Lecture are both available for viewing below. 

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern

Professor Stern is the IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and Head of the India Observatory at the London School of Economics. He is President of the British Academy (from July 2013), and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (June 2014).

Professor Stern has held academic appointments in the UK at Oxford, Warwick and the LSE and abroad including at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Ecole Polytechnique and the Collège de France in Paris, the Indian Statistical Institute in Bangalore and Delhi, and the People’s University of China in Beijing.

He was Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1994-1999, and Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at the World Bank, 2000-2003.

He was Second Permanent Secretary to Her Majesty’s Treasury from 2003-2005; Director of Policy and Research for the Prime Minister’s Commission for Africa from 2004-2005; Head of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, published in 2006; and Head of the Government Economic Service from 2003-2007.

He was knighted for services to economics in 2004 and made a cross-bench life peer as Baron Stern of Brentford in 2007. He has published more than 15 books and 100 articles and his most recent book is “Why are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency and Promise of Tackling Climate Change”.

He holds 12 honorary degrees and has received the Blue Planet Prize (2009), the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2010), the Leontief Prize (2010), and the Schumpeter Award (2015), amongst many others.