Seminar 5: Who cares about deltas? Growth vs. culture vs. climate change

River deltas are vital ecosystems supporting rich biodiversity, unique cultural traditions, and millions of livelihoods through fisheries and agriculture while also serving as critical buffers against storm surges and coastal erosion. Central to the development of the modern global trade and eco-system, they are increasingly threatened by climate change impacts; sea-level rise, altered river flows, extreme weather events and continuing forms of colonial and ethno-nationalist exploitation to name just a few. In this seminar, we will discuss the past and future of deltas and how we can ensure a sustainable future for their communities, biodiversity, and entire ecosystems.

This is a free public event open to all on a first-come-first-served basis.

Please join us for this fifth seminar.

Programme & Speakers

17:00-18:45: Presentations and Panel Discussion

Professor Jim Hall, Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks at the Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University.

Professor Veronica Strang, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Oxford University.

Dilip da Cunha, Architect

Professor Katherine Ibbett, Professor of French, Oxford University.

1 8:45-19:15: Drinks Reception

Speaker Bios

Professor Jim Hall is a Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks. He is internationally recognised for his research on risk analysis and decision-making under uncertainty for water resource systems, flood and coastal risk management, infrastructure systems and adaptation to climate change. His group developed the first national water resource systems simulation model for England and Wales. Furthermore, his systems analysis methods have been applied worldwide.

Professor Veronica Strang is a cultural anthropologist. Her ethnographic research and consultancy work is concerned with human-environmental relationships, in particular societies’ engagements with water. She has worked with multiple organisations, including UNESCO and the UN, on water and sustainability issues, as well as assisting Indigenous communities’ claims for land and water. Her most recent book, 'Water Beings: from nature worship to the environmental crisis', was published by Reaktion in 2023.

Dilip da Cunha has authored many books, including the award-winning ‘The Invention of Rivers: Alexander’s Eye and Ganga’s Descent’, that stems from questioning the natural status given to rivers and the imaging and imagining that this assumption has inspired. Far from being natural entities, he considers rivers to be products of a cultivated eye that privilege water at one moment in the hydrological cycle when it appears containable and controllable and argues for an alternate ground for design and planning.

Professor Katherine Ibbett’s latest work – ‘Liquid Empire’, follows literary rivers across texts from France and the Americas, thinking about those rivers as tributaries to a wider oceanic history. In exploring rivers from the Rhine to the Mississippi she asks how the small scale of riverbank writing paradoxically allows us to trace France’s expansionist poetics and politics and argues that following the river allows us to build a different literary history of early modern France.

Seminar Background

'Conversations in Environmental Sustainability: Beyond Greenwashing' is a termly seminar which brings together leading thinkers and decision-makers from academia, business, government and NGOs to look beyond greenwashing. Each seminar examines 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.

A panel of experts each speak individually before engaging with each other in a panel discussion. This is followed by further conversations over drinks in the College. St Edmund Hall’s intimate and beautiful site provides the setting for the audience of experts and guests to consider honest, solution-based responses to the challenges posed if we are to deliver environmental sustainability.

Filming and photography

Please note: this lecture will be recorded and published on St Edmund Hall’s digital and print communication platforms where appropriate.

There will be photography on the day.

If you do not wish to be filmed or photographed, please let the event organiser know.

Registration

This event is open to the public. All are welcome.

If you have any questions, please email events@seh.ox.ac.uk.

Seminar 5: Conversations in Environmental Sustainability