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Article One
“There is no dichotomy between environmental protection and economic growth.” That was the message of Professor Bob Watson, Chief Scientific Advisor at Defra, who delivered the Institution of Environmental Sciences’ Ninth Annual Burntwood Lecture at the Royal Society, London on 11th November, 2009. He spoke on ‘Using the Environmental Sciences for a Sustainable Future.’
In a broad-ranging but detailed talk Bob Watson tackled climate change and biodiversity loss in relation to four critical areas: food, water, energy and human security and highlighted the interrelationship of these issues. He called for a Government strategy that both mitigates and adapts to climate change saying “we are currently totally and utterly maladapted to today’s climate variability in most sectors and in most countries of the world.”
After outlining worrying, but likely, scenarios of a future where summers like 2006 would be considered normal, Professor Watson outlined the major adverse effect this would have on food production, ecological systems, biodiversity, human health, flooding, coastal erosion and food security. A major challenge facing society is to “double food availability in 25-50 years” whilst making it affordable and producing it in an sustainable way.
He called for “explicit pro-poor climate change policies from the farm to the global level.” From valuing ecosystem services at a local level to eliminating OECD subsidies. These bold policies will require political and moral leadership, with advocates in Government with long-term perspectives.
The evening also included the presentation of the John Rose Award given to Carly Daniels of the University of Plymouth. The Award includes a grant of £1000 to support the publicising of her research project on developing and understanding the use of natural dietary biotic supplements in lobsters.
The rest of the videos and the slides from both talks are available here.