The seventh annual Fulbright Legacy Lecture
Professor Lord Nicholas Stern: The Best of Centuries or the Worst of Centuries: Leadership, Governance and Cohesion in an Interdependent World
The world has changed dramatically in the last three decades. We have seen the rise of China and emerging market economies redraw the international division of labour and the balance of economic power, and the global commons have come under intense pressure. The international economic order, which William Fulbright helped to build after the second world war, served fairly well for much of the second half of the last century. It must be re-cast for our increasingly interdependent world if we are to avoid the grave risks we face, including climate change, pandemics and conflict. If we do, and this will require both leadership and collaboration, we could create a very attractive future - the best of centuries. If not, the destruction which could follow could take us to the worst of centuries.
Lord Stern is IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government at the London School of Economics and Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. He is a member of the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Financial Systems and is President of the Royal Economic Society (2018-19). He was President of the British Academy (July 2013 – July 2017) and elected Fellow of the Royal Society (2014). He was Chief Economist at both the World Bank (2000-03) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1994-99) and was Head of the UK Government Economic Service (2003-07). He produced the landmark Stern Review (2006) on the economics of climate change. His most recent book is Why Are We Waiting? (MIT Press 2015). He was knighted in 2004, made a cross-bench life peer in 2007 and appointed Companion of Honour in 2017 for services to economics, international relations and tackling climate change.
This event is generously supported by the Fulbright Association and the Lois Roth Endowment.