Annual T.M.C. Asser Lecture

The Asser Institute is very pleased to announce that Professor Joyeeta Gupta, winner of the prestigious Spinoza Prize and a leading global voice on climate and environmental governance, will deliver the 10th T.M.C. Asser Annual Lecture. The lecture, which will address the need for abandoning fossil fuel and the role of social movements and independent courts providing access to climate justice, will take place on Wednesday 26 November 2025 in The Hague (in-person).

Abstract
“Protecting the public interest in times of climate change: from abandoning fossil fuel to sharing our Earth”
By Joyeeta Gupta

Fossil fuels are the biggest contributor to climate change, which, in turn, is the key driver of all other environmental problems, such as changing hydrological patterns, biodiversity loss, as well as air, water and soil pollution. All of this is detrimental to human health and wellbeing. Scholars argue that a global temperature increase of 1℃ is the just objective and that the global system must accelerate the phase-out of fossil fuels to prevent significant harm to people and irreversible harm to Earth’s life-supporting systems.

This lecture will discuss the need for abandoning fossil fuel, why it’s not happening, and how this can be countered by social movements and independent courts providing access to climate justice. It then discusses the bigger picture of crossed planetary boundaries. Research into ‘just boundaries’ shows we must accelerate multilateralism, not retreat into nationalist rights to pollute. When resources are scarce, three rational actor responses often emerge: neo-liberal capitalist, hegemonic state-centered, and polycentric approaches. However, only a social practice model building on multilateral goals and principles, institutionalised in a possible global Constitution, could help us address our dire situation. Though seemingly impossible today, in five years, the world may call for such a dream.

About Joyeeta Gupta
Joyeeta Gupta is the 2023 winner of the Spinoza Prize, the highest academic award in the Netherlands. She is full professor of Environment and Development in the Global South at the University of Amsterdam and IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, and Faculty Professor on Sustainability (2019–2024).

A leading global voice on climate and environmental governance, she co-chaired UNEP’s Global Environment Outlook-6, presented at the UN Environment Assembly and was awarded the PROSE Award for environmental science. She was co-chair of the Earth Commission and a member of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, contributing to the UN 2023 Water Conference.

In 2022, Gupta received the Piers Sellers Prize for solution-focused climate research. She was a lead author in the IPCC panel that won the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007, and of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Zaved Second Prize). Gupta has published over 120 journal articles, with 17,000+ citations and an h-index of 64, and has supervised nearly fifty PhD students. In the Netherlands, she has served on high-level advisory bodies including the Commission on Development Cooperation and the Advisory Council on International Affairs (2011–2019). In 2019, Joyeeta Gupta received an ERC Advanced Grant for her work on climate and fossil fuels.

Further details on registration and attendance will be announced soon. If you have any questions about the event, please contact tmcasserlecture@asser.nl

For media inquiries, please contact p.messer@asser.nl