Season 1, Episode 2: Guest Dr. Robert Nicholls

Fantastic.

Well, it's great to join you, Gabby, and a big welcome to our first guest, Professor Robert Nicholls.

So he's one of the world's leading experts on coastal engineering, sea level rise and climate adaption.

He holds a professorship in climate adaption at the University of East Anglia and coastal engineering at the University of Southampton in the UK.

And previously, he served as the director for the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research from 2019 to 2024.

I've known Robert for almost 20 years, but over, I guess, almost 40 decades, four decades now, not 40 decades, four decades now, Robert has helped shape our global understanding of rising sea levels and how coastal flooding will affect sort of society's infrastructure and ecosystems around the world.

His research focuses on understanding long-term coastal challenges and importantly developing those practical solutions that can be translated into real world policy.

His expertise spans the globe.

So you've worked on megacities, you've worked on river deltas, you've worked on vulnerable small islands and many other things.

And I know, Robert, you've advised many governments, the UK, Netherlands, you've done a lot of work on Bangladesh and Singapore as well.

And Robert, you played quite a key role in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

So you've served as a lead author for, I never quite get it, is it four or five? Four.

Four reports, but you've contributed to other reports as well.

And also more recently, you've led the World's Climate Research Programme on Sea Level Rise Grand Challenge.

And you've held a number of big conferences around the world and brought the community together.

So Robert has become one of the defining voices helping scientists our society understand and prepare for the future of kind of coastal change and so Robert it's absolutely fantastic to have you as our first guest.

Well thank you very much Ivan and Gabby it's really great pleasure to be here and a great opportunity to really talk and sort of reflect on where we are with sea level rise and maybe the journey where the journey where have we come from but where are we going I think that's that's probably the most important bit I think.

Yeah

So we have a series of questions for you, Robert, but I really want this to be more of a conversation as well.

So we might interrupt you and ask some follow up questions and I'll start and then hand over to Gabby.

So our first question is, what drew you to coastal science and engineering? And I guess a sort of immediate follow on question, what has kept you passionate about that for the last sort of 40 years of your career?

That's a good question.

I mean, I think my dad always made the comment when I started doing a PhD on coastal engineering at Southampton that, well, you were meant to do this because as a boy, my father came from Pembroke in the West Wales.

And so every childhood holiday until I was 17, we went to Pembrokeshire.

And there were lovely sandy beaches there.