Professor Sir John Lawton, Chairman, Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, presents this lecture; “Ecology, Politics and Policy”
Abstract: ”The British Ecological Society aims to promote the science of ecology through research and the use of such research to educate the public and influence policy decisions which involve ecological matters.” So goes the Society’s statement in its annual accounts. The italics are mine. How successful have ecologists been in influencing UK and EU environmental policy? Many scientists hold to the ‘deficit model’ of turning science into policy, the view that is only politicians are told what the science reveals, ‘correct’ policies will automatically follow. Nothing can be further from the truth. Politicians have all kinds of reasons, some valid, some less valid, not to adopt what often seem to us to be common sense policies to protect the environment. This lecture will explore the successes and failures of ecologists to influence UK and European environmental policy, and review the extensive literature (largely ignored by scientists) on the sociology of evidence-based policy making.
Biography: John Lawton trained as a zoologist at the University of Durham, where he completed his PhD in 1969. From Durham he moved to be Demonstrator in Ecology in the Department of Zoology at Oxford for three years, before moving to the Biology Department at the University of York in 1971. He was awarded a Personal Chair in York in 1985. In 1989 he founded, and was appointed Director of, the NERC Centre for Population Biology at Imperial College, Silwood Park, where he remained until 1999. He took up the post as Chief Executive of the Natural Environment Research Council in October 1999, from which he retired in March 2005. He is currently Chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.
His scientific interests are wide, but have focussed on the population dynamics and biodiversity of birds and insects, with emphasis over the last decade of the impacts of global environmental change on wild plants and animals. He has published over 320 scientific papers (including 17 in Nature and 7 in Science) and written or edited six books and symposium volumes; he is among the most highly cited ecologists and environmental biologists in the world.
During his career he has served on a wide range of committees and bodies, including the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, the Tarmac Environmental Advisory Panel, and the Councils of the British Ecological Society (BES), Freshwater Biological Association, NERC, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). He was Chairman of RSPB for five years and is currently a Vice President of both RSPB and the British Trust for Ornithology, a Trustee of WWF-UK and President of the British Ecological Society.
Awards and honours include the President’s Gold Medal of the BES, the ECI Prize Winner 1996 for Terrestrial Ecology, the BES Marsh Award for Ecology, the Kempe Award for Distinguished Ecologists, the Frink Medal of the Institute of Zoology, the Society for Conservation Biology’s Edward T. LaRoe III Memorial Award, the Japan Prize for Conservation of Biodiversity, Honorary Life Memberships of the Royal Entomological Society and the Game Conservancy Trust, and the Ramon Margalef Prize for Ecolgy. He has held, or currently holds, honorary positions in the Institute of Ecosystem Studies, New York, the Natural History Museum, London, the Department of Biology at the University of York, the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, and the Institute of Arable Crops Research, Rothamsted.
He has Honorary Degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Birmingham, East Anglia, Lancaster and York, and the Fellowship of Imperial College.
He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1989, awarded the CBE in 1997, and Knighted for his services to Ecological Science in 2005.
John is married to Dot and has two grown up children and 5 grandchildren. In his recreation time he enjoys birdwatching, botanising and bug-hunting, natural-history photography, travel, walking, gardening, cooking and recovering from playing with his grandchildren.