St Edmund Hall hosts second environmental sustainability seminar

St Edmund Hall brought together industry and academic perspectives to discuss the question: ‘Going Green and environmental sustainability: how do we measure it?’ at the second seminar in the Hall’s public series: ‘Conversations in Environmental Sustainability: beyond greenwashing’ on Friday 23 June 2023. The termly seminar brings together leading thinkers and decision-makers from academia, business, government and NGOs to look beyond greenwashing. Each term they examine a specific issue related to environmental sustainability, exploring how to effectively marry environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals with financial returns, innovation and other business imperatives.

Around 70 people attended the event including Aularians, students and staff to hear about the highly topical question of how small to large businesses could audit the impacts of their organisation on the environment. Principal of St Edmund Hall, and Oxford Professor of Biodiversity, Professor Baroness (Kathy) Willis welcomed the audience to the seminar followed by an introduction to the panellists given by Dimitrios Tsomocos, Professor of Financial Economics and Fellow by Special Election at St Edmund Hall. The audience heard from Dr Nicola Ranger, Executive Director, Oxford Martin Systemic Resilience Programme, Jonathan Taylor, President, Awesix and Harriet Waters, Head of Environmental Sustainability, University of Oxford. The speakers explored what it meant to be green, the scope and scale of environmental assessment and what data and metrics are best when assessing green impact.

Since 2019, St Edmund Hall has been committed to being recognised as one of the greenest and most environmentally sustainable colleges in Oxford and the establishment of this new sustainability seminar is also critical to this mission. The Hall aims to facilitate a forum for considered honest, solution-based responses to the many global environmental sustainability challenges as well as improving our own environmental impact. This was followed by a drinks reception and a private dinner in which further debate, analysis and forging of connections between different sectors continued to help us understand how businesses can measure its environmental impact.

A video of the second seminar is available to watch on the St Edmund Hall YouTube channel.