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Wednesday October 9th 2024: 'Homelessness and the Housing Emergency’. A Talk by Ellie Tomlin, Regional Fundraiser for Shelter.

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Summary

Ellie will talk about the current housing emergency in this country, the scale of it and what this looks like for individuals and communities. She will also talk about the government’s current plans for housing and what Shelter is campaigning to see.

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Biographical Details

Ellie has worked at Shelter since 2020, in fundraising and community engagement. In that time, she has seen how Shelter and the housing emergency has been affected by a pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis and changes in Government. Currently 1 in 3 people are impacted by the housing emergency.  Shelter’s work involves advice and support for those facing homelessness, whilst campaigning on local and national levels to improve the situation.

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Wednesday November 13th 2024:  'Climate Change and Human Rights in International Law’. A talk by Professor Surya Subedi, Professor of International Law, University of Leeds’. 

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Summary

Professor Subedi will talk about the extent to which a human rights framework can be used to require states to prevent climate change and mitigate its impact on human life. My focus will be on analysing the obligations of states arising from the universality of human rights and how they relate to climate change and how various principles of international law could be utilised to require both states and business organisations to align their activities towards preventing climate change.

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Biographical Details

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Surya P. Subedi is Professor of International Law at the University of Leeds and a barrister in London. He also is a visiting professor on the international human rights law programme of the University of Oxford. He served as the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia for six years (2009-2015). He also served for five years, starting in 2010, on an advisory group on human rights to the British Foreign Secretary. In 2021, he was appointed legal procedural advisor to the World Conservation Congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature held in Marseille, France. He has written a number of works on the theory and practice of international law and human rights and acted as a counsel in a number of cases before the international courts and tribunals, including the International Court of Justice. He obtained his first degree in Law from Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, a Master’s degree with Distinction from the University of Hull and a DPhil (PhD) as well as a higher doctorate – the DCL – from the University of Oxford. He was made an honorary OBE in 2004 and a QC (now KC) in 2017.

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Weds January 22nd 2025: Dr Sally Brooks, School for Business and Society, York University, The problem with (ISDS) Corporate Courts in International Trade Deals.

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Summary

The Corporate Court (ISDS - Investor State Dispute Settlement) system was created 60 years ago to protect foreign investors in former colonies after independence. ISDS is a secretive international legal system that allows corporations to sue states for laws, regulations and domestic court rulings they think will reduce their profits. It was the outcome of discussions between oil companies and European banks who saw it as a “Magna Carta for investors”. With its endorsement by the World Bank, ISDS became a condition for developing countries to secure trade and investment agreements.

 

Corporate courts operate very differently to domestic courts. Only investors can sue states – states cannot sue investors. Cases are heard in designated arbitration centres, not courts, by a tribunal of three arbitrators, no judge. Rulings are often not published. Yet sums awarded are eye-watering – in 2006 Ecuador was ordered by an ISDS tribunal to pay $2.6 billion in compensation to Occidental Petroleum for terminating a contract even though the company had violated Ecuadorian law.

 

Today there are more than 3000 international trade and investment treaties that include ISDS clauses. Moreover, despite prior successes of citizen movements in pushing back at the normalisation of ISDS across all international trade, countries in the Global North are increasingly finding themselves on the wrong end of a system originally designed to limit the sovereignty of governments in the Global South. 

 

After discussing the origins and spread of the ISDS system, this talk will turn to contemporary trends that point towards its further expansion and entrenchment: including its use by the fossil fuel industry as a mechanism to stall climate action; and its transformation into a highly profitable asset class for financial investors.

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​Biographical Details

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​​​​Sally Brooks is an international development academic and former practitioner. She is an honorary fellow in the School for Business and Society and a member of the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre at the University of York. She has previously worked with Save the Children Fund, CIDSE and VSO, among others. Her current research focuses on the marketisation and financialisation of global development, and the role and influence of elite foundations. She is an activist and trade campaigner with the Global Justice York group and National Secretary of Global Justice Now. ​

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Weds February 12th 2025: Eric Kemp-Benedict, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, The Market Turn, the Failure to Meet the Climate Challenge, and What Comes Next.

How to make sense of the present moment? This talk presents one framing, drawing on the notion of the ‘Market Turn’ introduced by the Oxford economic historian Avner Offer. Beginning in the 1980s, the UK, together with the US and some other high-income countries, began to shift away from social democracy towards market liberalism – the Market Turn.

 

This talk argues that the Market Turn has undermined our capacity for collective action to address global challenges. Noting that justice and fairness are instrumental – and not only moral – necessities for mobilizing collective action, this presenter argues that some notions of justice are better suited than others. While market liberalism includes a concept of justice, it is individualistic rather than collective. What is more, market liberal policies have, over the past decades, erected structural barriers to addressing common challenges, whether within Yorkshire, at national level, or internationally. This has contributed to our failure to meet the climate challenge.

 

At present, market liberalism may itself be in decline. It is too early to tell where current trends will lead. But it is not too early to consider possibilities. Drawing on the recent writings of thoughtful commentators, this talk presents some sketches of possible futures, noting how our individual choices can influence how the future unfolds.

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Speaker Biography:

​Dr. Kemp-Benedict is an Associate Professor of Ecological Economics at the University of Leeds. In addition to leading the Ecological Economics master’s program, he carries out research on long-run growth, decoupling, structural change, and economic development, all viewed through an ecological economics lens. Until the end of 2023, he worked at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), where he directed SEI’s Asia Centre from 2013 until 2016, and the SEI US Centre’s Equitable Transitions Program from 2018 to 2023.

 

Thursday (please note not Wednesday!) March 6th, Dr Phil Armstrong, The Insights of Modern Monetary Theory: Correcting Misconceptions

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In this presentation I examine the origins of MMT and its relationship to other heterodox schools. I consider its key insights and the implications of MMT for policy development. I discuss the major criticisms and commonly held misconceptions of MMT as a school of thought.​

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What is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) explains how the monetary system works. Taking the UK as an example, it recognises that the UK government is the monopoly-issuer of the pounds it accepts in taxes and must spend or lend these pounds before taxes can be paid by the private sector. 

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The purpose of taxes is not to provide the government with revenue to spend but rather to allow the government to provision itself. The importance of sequence is stressed in MMT. The government, at the outset, imposes a tax liability in pounds on the private sector who then must supply goods and services (especially labour) to the state in order to access the state money it needs to pay taxes.  In addition, the private sector might supply more resources in order to acquire additional pounds to buy goods and services for sale in the state’s money. The money used to pay taxes must originate from the government. The only alternative would be counterfeiting of state money by the private sector. 

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A currency-issuing government, such as the UK government (unlike currency-using households) is not constrained by lack of finance (phrases like ‘black holes;’ in the public finances are meaningless) but rather lack of real resources.  The state can only buy what is for sale in its own currency. Where spare capacity exists, the government can buy available resources at current prices increasing its provisioning and ability to serve public purpose. However, if the government competes with the private sector by raising its offer prices at full employment this is likely to be inflationary.

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​​​​​​Dr Phil Armstrong: Speaker biography

As an Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE) member, I am a strong advocate of the need for pluralism in economics. I have spent the last 40 years teaching - in the main economics. I hold an M.A. in Economics (University of Leeds, 1986) and a PhD in Economics (University of Solent, 2021).

 

I would describe myself as a Christian and a Democratic Socialist (I especially admire the work of R H Tawney and Karl Polanyi). Secondly, I am a strong advocate of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and believe it provides both powerful insights into the way the economy works and how progressive economic policy can be put into practice.

 

I am currently working on a biography of the originator of MMT, Warren Mosler.

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