How the right laws can save the planet

The planet and its inhabitants face critical threats – including climate change, collapse of biodiversity, reverses in progress on global poverty and persistent inequality.

How can international and national laws address these threats? What insights do we have about the conditions that lead to their enactment and implementation? How can they be applied in the face of growing threats to respect for international law?

Meet your speakers and chair

Alex Cobham is an economist and chief executive of the Tax Justice Network. His research has focused on illicit financial flows, effective taxation and inequalities, including at Oxford University and the Center for Global Development. He has led tax justice advocacy at a range of NGOs and has consulted widely, including for UNCTAD, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia, DFID, and the World Bank. Published books include The Uncounted (Polity Press) and Estimating Illicit Financial Flows (Oxford University Press, open access, with Petr Janský ). His most recent book, What Do We Know and What Should We Do About… Tax Justice? is published by SAGE.

Tessa Khan is an international climate change lawyer and campaigner. Before founding Uplift, she was co-founder and Co-Director of the Climate Litigation Network, which supports groundbreaking strategic climate litigation around the world. She has spent two decades supporting grassroots, regional and international movements for justice and has served as an expert advisor to UN human rights bodies and national governments, while working in Thailand, Egypt, India, the US, the Netherlands and Australia. In 2019, she was named by TIME magazine as one of fifteen women leading the fight against climate change. Tessa is also a recipient of a Climate Breakthrough award, the largest climate action grant for individuals.

Siva Thambisetty is an Associate Professor of Law at the London School of Economics, where she teaches and researches on the legal protection of inventions, innovation in emerging technologies, cultural property and the use and circulation of genetic resources. Dr Thambisetty attended intergovernmental negotiations on the BBNJ Treaty, first as an advisor to the Pacific Small Island Developing States (IGC2, IGC3) and second, as an expert on the G77 Chair’s Team in 2022 (IGC5) and 2023 (Resumed IGC5). From 2019 to 2023 her work and publications on the treaty negotiations were funded by LSE Knowledge Exchange and Impact. She currently leads a KEI-funded Oceans Biodiversity Collective, engaging in policy conversations on the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty.

Ashfaq Khalfan is the Director of the Sustainability Regulation Observatory (SRO) and Distinguished Policy Fellow at LSE's Global School of Sustainability. He was previously Climate Justice Director at Oxfam America and Law and Policy Director at Amnesty International. The SRO critically analyses sustainability regulation and generates insights into more effective design that advances human rights, social justice and sustainability.

More about this event

This event is part of the LSE Festival: How to save the planet running from Monday 15 to Saturday 20 June 2026. This year's Festival explores how existential threats including the climate crisis, conflict and AI are affecting all parts of the world, transforming the way and where we live, and how our societies function. With a series of events asking what can we be doing to save the Earth, its people and environment? Booking for all Festival events will open on Monday 18 May.

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