Earth Day at SOAS: should corporate owners be held to account for nature loss and the climate crisis?
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
- Venue
- Brunei Gallery
- Room
- B304
- Event type
- Seminar
About this event
Join us for a change-focused Earth Day at SOAS, where we will introduce a new policy research project within the Political Economy Research Cluster (PERC) of the Department of Politics and International Studies, inviting new partnerships, social media and policy research initiatives.
A lunch will be served prior to the event in room B301 from 11:00am to 12 noon.
Who should join:
- Undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in developing a final year project or dissertation related to whether corporate owners should be held to account for ecological damage.
- PhD and ECR researchers interested in climate/environment research and corporate responsibility.
- Climate activists and researchers interested in fighting for climate justice against corporate impunity.
Restoring firms' legal accountability and liability for climate damages
Giant corporations have the rights of a person, but none of the responsibilities. Owner-shareholders and top executives exercise immense power in society both globally and locally but are not responsible in law for their actions according to the law of limited liability. This doesn’t only apply to climate impacts but also to human rights violations. Understanding the link between climate change and human rights is, therefore, a further target of this project.
Corporations often advocate for the removal of regulations they see as limiting, while supporting those that align with their interests. Increasingly, they are also promoting systems and structures that reflect corporate approaches to organisation and decision-making. This trend risks concentrating influence in ways that may reduce transparency and accountability in the evolving global order.
About the speakers
Dr Seebal Aboudounya is Associate Lecturer in Political Economy and specialises in areas such as International Institutions, deliberative democracy, International Political Economy, and the Political Economy of Development.
Dr Harald Heubaum is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Global Energy and Climate Policy at the SOAS Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy (CISD) and Deputy Director and Co-founder of the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance (CSF).
Professor Dan Plesch is Professor of Diplomacy and Strategy at SOAS University of London, a ‘door tenant’ at the legal chambers of 9 Bedford Row, London, and a Fellow at the British Institute for International and Comparative Law.
About the organiser
The event is promoted by the Political Economy Research Cluster (PERC) at the Department of Politics and International Studies, currently supported by Dr Frank Maracchione, ESRC postdoc at SOAS University of London.
PERC fosters creative dialogue in research and teaching to understand why and how the capitalist world takes its existing forms. In a time of interrelated crises, PERC is consciously eclectic in promoting the critical analysis of capitalism across domestic, comparative, and international contexts.
Academics in the cluster examine the relationship between capitalism, the urban condition and infrastructure; Marxism and imperial history; racial capitalism; international development policy; the political economy of energy transitions and climate change; as well as the politics of care and social reproduction.
To support our conversations and research agendas, PERC activities include an annual seminar series, dedicated high-profile lectures, and other social gatherings. The cluster provides a welcoming space for students from all levels – undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral – who are interested in the study of political economy.
Further information and previous work
- Does limited liability protect the rich, and not the public, and do we all pay a price for that?
- Blankenburg, S., Plesch, D., & Wilkinson, F. (2010). Limited liability and the modern corporation in theory and in practice. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34(5), 821-837.
- Plesch, D. (2013, June 18). Limited liability – a fundamental breach of our rights? Remarks delivered at the UK House of Lords.
- Plesch, D., & Blankenburg, S. (2008). How to make corporations accountable. Institute of Employment Rights.
- Plesch, D., & Blankenburg, S. (2008). How to make corporations accountable. Institute of Employment Rights.
