Sir Robert Tony Watson is a British chemist who has been described by the New York Times as “an outspoken advocate of the idea that human actions—mainly burning coal and oil—are contributing to global warming and must be changed to avert environmental upheavals.” He has chaired, co-chaired or directed national and international scientific, technical, and economic assessments of stratospheric ozone depletion, biodiversity and ecosystems, climate change, and agricultural science and technology, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
You were the chair of the IPCC. What is your prognosis for the links between climate change science and policy going forward?
I haven’t been involved since the Third Assessment Report. The link between science and policy is a strong one in that most governments do look to see what the latest scientific knowledge is, and IPCC provides that knowledge, whether understanding how humans are acting is affecting the climate, the limitation on ecological systems, food, water, and human health, and how can we transition to a low-carbon economy and the economic implications. So no doubt, government and private sector do have roles in providing the most important understanding. However there’s also a political debate—there’s a lot of politics here and issues around equity. For example, what is a fair distribution of emissions rights and to what degree should China, as the single largest emitter of gases, have obligations compared to the USA and Europe? And what are the obligations of smaller countries?
Clearly there is the issue also of financing and then there’s the sticking point of whether the developing world should pay for this effort, and who should pay for the impact of climate change given that the industrialized world is causing the problem. IPCC is a solid foundation for this complex political debate.
What do you think of President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s bilateral climate agreement, announced at the Group of 20 Summit recently? How will it affect the negotiations leading up to Paris?
It’s an important step, but unfortunately still inadequate. If you look at the US commitment—a 25 percent reduction, relative to 2005—that’s only a 12 to 14 percent reduction in relation to 1990 by 2025. That’s not adequate to putting us on a pathway to a two degree world. The Chinese commitment is a major first step. For a country like China to say we have a commitment is good, but how much will those emissions grow between now and 2030, when they peak? So when I look at the commitments, I don’t believe it’s consistent. It’s putting the world on a two degree path. So I applaud it; but they could both go much further. So then the question is: will it encourage other counties who are large emitters in an absolute sense, like growing economies in India and elsewhere? Will it encourage them to take strong action? And what came out of Lima recently does not make me greatly optimistic that we’ll get commitments from other countries. We’re more likely to be on a path of 3 to 4 degrees Celsius.
The political commitment is to limit human-induced climate change to two degrees Celsius, but now we’re looking at even with that there will be adverse effects on people and ecological systems, and biodiversity, which will adversely affect food and water security as well. Especially in places already water and food insecure, like Africa. And clearly sea level rise even in a two degree world will flood low-lying countries like Bangladesh.
How will these commitments affect the negotiations leading up to Paris?
Clearly it will give it a positive impetus that the US has said, “We will limit our greenhouse gas emissions,” and China says the same—there’s no question it’s positive. But the question is whether that will put us on a two degree rather than a 3 to 4-degree path. The question for me however is will a Republican-controlled Congress try its best to undermine that in the next few years, depending on the next election cycle. Were it to be dominated by Republicans in the House and Senate. I believe they’ll do everything in their power to undo what Obama has committed to.
An analogy there is Australia. When Kevin Rudd was prime minister, Australians took a proactive view. But now climate change is off the agenda. In many countries, when there are changes in administration, no one knows if the new administration will live up to the climate commitments of a previous administration. Stability in a country is very important. Germany or the UK, they both had a fairly consistent policy over the last 20 years. Since Margaret Thatcher, the UK has had a consistent attitude, and in Germany since Chancellor Kohl. That sends a strong message to the private sector that these countries do want to decarbonize, so they should follow suit. But in a country where one minute it’s a serious issue and then the next it’s not, the private sector has no idea what the policies will be over 20 years, and what the private sector needs is consistency and a level playing field.
As a career scientist who has been talking about human impact on climate change for almost 40 years, what have been some of the biggest successes for the climate?
The biggest successes are that some countries have accepted that climate change is a serious issue and done something about it. In particular, the EU and within that, Germany stands out as the most successful in trying to start that significant transition to a low-carbon economy. So Germany is a leading light. But you could argue that those two countries now will argue against climate change being a serious issue, but the challenge they have is how to reach that two degree goal. And there are all these equity issues. The fear of most developing countries is that if we’re forced to go to a low-carbon economy, the cost today of renewable energy is higher than fossil fuel and that will hurt our fight against economic growth and antipoverty efforts. But overall, we do have an agreement that climate change is a serious issue, and the question is how to make that transition in the energy sector and the land-use sector in trying to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and the two big issues in the land use sector: how do we reduce the rate of deforestation, which is a major contributor to emission gases, and how do we reduce emissions in the agricultural sector—methane from livestock and methane from rice products and nitric oxide from fertilizer. So there is the real challenge in the agriculture and forestry sectors.
Where do the greatest challenges still lie?
On the other side, there still are major climate deniers, certainly in the US and in the emerging voice in the UK, who are trying to protect the interests of the coal, oil, and natural gas lobby. So while all countries have signed up, there are still major climate deniers who have vested interests.
You have been deeply involved in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) process. What effect will this process have on the path of human development?
The UN commitment to try to develop a series of sustainable development goals to build on and follow millennium goals is a major positive step. The big difference between the Millenium Development Goals, which were very important, and the Sustainable Development Goals is that they will be applied to all countries, whereas the Millennium Development Goals only deal with limited issues for developing goals. I like very much the final report of the working group—food, water, energy, human security and human health, and biodiversity in our natural world, bringing gender, education, governance, and so on. If indeed the world tries to adopt these sustainable development goals with well-defined targets with monitoring, it will be a major step forward in both developing countries and for sustainable development in industrialized countries. Some people are critical there are 17 goals, with hundreds of targets. It’s possible by the time they have finally adopted, they may have to combine some of them. They have to recognize that most goals are interrelated—food security is dependent on water, and climate change, and general issues, and education and governance issues, human health, all these issues are interrelated and the challenge will be some indicators that recognize that interrelationship between one sustainable development goal and another. But overall I’m pleased we’re moving in that direction. Time will tell if they get developed and implemented, but it’s a major step in the right direction.
You have been skeptical of scientist’s bias towards overstating the connection between human activity and climate change—why?
If you overstate an issue, and the science later turns out to show the issue is overstated, the policy makers I govern and decision makers in private sector and civil society will never trust us again on climate change or anything else. If we bring up biodiversity or water security, if we overstate the climate issue, we will lose the trust of those we’re trying to convince. And the other reason is that climate change is serious enough anyway. We don’t need to overstate the issue. Changes will have a major effect on sea level. And an increase in extreme events will have effects on different societies, so we don’t need to overstate and we will lose the trust.
Envision a world where we had finally come to grips with climate change. What would that world look like and how did we get there?
The world will be somewhat different from today. We will have seen adverse effects. Even now, if we achieve a two degree world, we would still lose species and have affected ecosystem functioning. Food will be more difficult to grow in parts of the world and more water shortages. But it will be manageable. But it will be a world that is not as good as today’s world, but it won’t be so severely affected by diversity and food insecurity and others. To get to that world, we need an urgent transition away from fossil fuel and a move to more renewable energy. We need more energy efficiency in our transportation and in our buildings and our industry. In some parts, the world will need nuclear energy and we need to see if the technology and … and fossil fuels can still emit but we capture that carbon and we store it in the deep ocean or in wells or in coal mines. So we need a major reduction in emissions from energy. And also from our land, so we have to stop deforestation, and we want to do that anyway if we want to protect our biodiversity, and so slowing deforestation and limiting it is good for biodiversity and climate change. And we need an agricultural system that minimizes greenhouse gas emissions. We need to reduce emissions in energy, agriculture, and forestry.
