Dr Thom Wetzer
About
Thom Wetzer is Associate Professor of Law and Finance at Oxford’s Faculty of Law and the Founding Director of the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme.
His research examines how law and finance can generate value and advance the public good, focusing on how we can build more resilient financial systems, improve the governance of corporations, and tackle the climate crisis. His work combines traditional legal scholarship with financial, scientific, and empirical analysis.
At Oxford, Thom is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, a member of the Leadership Team at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Co-Lead at Oxford Net Zero, and Lead Researcher at the Oxford Martin Initiative for a Net Zero Recovery.
Thom actively collaborates with and advises governments, central banks, corporations, NGOs, and international institutions – including the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and law firm De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek. He is a lead author on the 2021 UNEP Global Adaptation Gap Report.
Expertise
- Law
- Corporate governance
- Finance
- Climate change
- Climate financial risk
- Climate litigation
- Net zero commitments
- Sustainable finance
Selected publications
- UNEP Adaptation Gap Report: The Gathering Storm (2021)
- National COVID debts: climate change imperils countries' ability to repay (2021)
- Filling the evidentiary gap in climate litigation (2021)
- Foundations of system-wide financial stress testing with heterogeneous institutions (2020)
- Sensitive intervention points in the post-carbon transition (2019)
- Network-sensitive financial regulation (2019)
Media experience
Dr Thom Wetzer has extensive experience of working with major national and international media. His research has featured in leading outlets around the world, including the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, the BBC, CNN, The Washington Post, and The Guardian.
Recent media work
- Dutch court orders Shell to accelerate remissions cuts (Financial Times, 2021)
- Better use of climate science 'could see more big polluters successfully prosecuted' (Ends Report, 2021)
- How attribution can fill the evidence ‘gap’ in climate litigation (Carbon Brief, 2021)
- Climate change could lead to a debt crisis (Environment Journal, 2021)
- Global heating to blame for threat of deadly flood in Peru, study finds (The Guardian, 2021)
- HSBC, Barclays challenged over bond linked to Vietnamese coal project (Reuters, 2021)
- Fossil fuel companies paying top law firms millions to ‘dodge responsibility’ (The Guardian, 2021)
- Small shifts can stop climate change—if they happen in the right places (Popular Science, 2019)
- Oxford-econoom Thom Wetzer: ‘Klein zetje kan verduurzaming in een stroomversnelling brengen’
Languages
English, Dutch