Director appointed to take up the challenges of Living With Environmental Change

Professor Andrew Watkinson, Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, will take up the post during September.

Living With Environmental Change (LWEC) is an unprecedented partnership of 17 research, business and policy-making organisations working together to find ways for society and individual people to adapt to the environmental changes that we face now and in the future.

The partnership today announced the appointment of a Director for this ambitious UK programme. Professor Andrew Watkinson, who is currently Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and a Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, will take up the post during September.

Chairman of the LWEC Partners Board, Lord Selborne, said, "I am delighted that Andrew has agreed to join us. His extensive environmental research background and experience of running a major research centre, working at both national and international levels, will give LWEC the leadership it needs to deal with the huge range of environmental challenges that are already starting to affect people in the UK and across the world."

The LWEC programme will address environmental change in the short and medium-term at both the regional and global scale. A key objective is to provide the evidence-base which policy-makers and people need to make timely decisions that will enable us to prepare for the predicted changes and to manage the economic impacts.

Professor Watkinson's current research focuses on interdisciplinary aspects of climate change, ecology and coastal zone management, with particular emphasis on how science informs policy. He trained as an ecologist at York and the University of Wales, Bangor before moving to the University of East Anglia. He was presented in 2003 with the Marsh Award for Ecology by the British Ecological Society and is a visiting Professor at Fudan University in Shanghai. He is also currently Chair of the NERC/ESRC/DFID advisory committee on Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation, an initiative that will form part of the LWEC programme, and has already worked with most of the LWEC partners.

Professor Watkinson said, "Society is facing a range of challenges including climate change, population growth, globalisation and technological change. What I hope is that LWEC will play a vital part in securing the future wellbeing of the people and economy of the UK by providing the evidence base to inform policy debate and people's choices. I have no doubt that leading this partnership will itself be very challenging, but I am eager to start driving it forward."

His appointment will run initially for five years and his office will be hosted by the University of East Anglia during that period.

Further information

NERC Press Office
Natural Environment Research Council
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Notes

1. Living with Environmental Change was launched on 18 July 2008. It will transform how researchers, government and the public interact to tackle the key environmental challenges: climate change; loss of biodiversity; the availability of sustainable water and food supplies; preparing for and managing extreme events; protecting people, animals and plants from disease; and alleviating poverty in developing countries. The programme is an acknowledgement from researchers and policy-makers that climate change is only one part of a much bigger challenge: global environmental change caused by rapid economic and population growth.