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Please contact me directly via e-mail at tony@anthonyturton.com

ABOUT ME


I am co-author to two chapters of the World Water Assessment Program 2012 (Chapters 5 & 11). This is available for download here. The relevant report is Volume 1: Managing Water under Conditions of Uncertainty and Risk.

I have been appointed as an advisor to the Executive Management of Mintails (Ltd), responsible for developing appropriate strategies for dealing with AMD and other environmental issues arising from the safe reprocessing of tailings dumps after more than a century of gold mining.

I have been appointed as an advisor to the CEO of Coal of Africa (Ltd), responsible for developing appropiate policy and strategy for the mitigation of non-mining risk. Coal of Africa (Ltd) is a greenfields coal mining company operating in South Africa, with a number of rights, all of which are in water-constrained areas, some of which are highy contested because of cultural or ecological sensitivities. Some of these areas are also ecologically and culturally sensitive, so there has been a considerable public backlash. In essence my task is to assist the executive leadership of the company with the development of strategy that enables it to break free of the legacy constraints currently manifest in South Africa. My stated objective is to facilitate a process that enables the design of a future mine to be determined by a negotiated, viable and uncontested Closure Strategy, which I believe could make Coal of Africa (Ltd) the market leader in coal mining in water-constrained and culturally sensitive areas. I believe this to be possible if the strategy is applied in full. I look forward to this challenge, which is likely to be one of the biggest I have ever faced in my profesional career. This is consistent with my life experience, which has shown me that to bring about effective change, one needs to embrace the "enemy" while assisting them in changing their behaviour.

This is my updated Professional CV, which contains a full and updated Bibliography of all my published material.

As as professional speaker I help my client to meet their objectives. This is an example of a recent talk at TEDx Cape Town entitled Reinventing Uncivilization. This is a talk on the Water/Energy/Food Nexus.

Recently a book was published commemorating the World Water Week that has now become a global institution in the water sector. The author interviewed many of the recognized leaders in the water sector and I am honoured to have been included in that process. I have been closely involved with the Stockholm Water Prize (what is effectively the Nobel Prize in Water) for some time, having nominated two of the successful Laureates - Prof. Asit Biswas and Prof. Tony Allan. In the case of the former I was the sole nominator working on behalf of a group of recognized scientists, and in the case of the latter I was a member of a group of students, colleagues and friends that drafted the nomination. I have also had the privilegde of having worked with Prof. Kader Asmal, a Laureate in his own right and a South African citizen of impeccable integrity. Trying for a hatrick of successful nominations, I proposed Anglo Coal (under the leadership of Peter Gunther) for the Stockholm Industry Prize, in honour of their Acid Mine Drainage reclamation plant at eMalahleni, but sadly that nomination was not successful. To download the PDF click here.

I am a founding member of the Geothermal Energy Association of Southern Africa.

I was given the Habitat Council Award on 10 October 2009 in recognition of the work I have done on raising public awareness on water security. To download the citation click here. The text of my acceptance speech is availbale on My Scientific Papers page under the heading of Keynote Lectures.

I am a Director of TouchStone Resources (Pty) Ltd. This is a Cleantech company, based on a Social Entrepreneurship model, designed to enable development to take place in southern Africa in the face of water and energy constraints, by negotiating a new Social Contract. We are focusing on New Water and New Energy, consistent with my views on the Soft Path (to find out more click here).

I was elected Vice President of the International Water Resource Association (IWRA) to serve for the period 2010 - 2012, having served on the previous Board as an Executive Director.

I am a Professor in the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of Free State. This university continues to impress me with its commitment to research and higher education; and the Center amazes me because of the sheer number of quality post-graduate students it turns out each year from across the entire African continent. To know more about this please click here.

I am a Trustee in a project called Reclaim Camissa, which seeks to rehabilitate the very first river that was ever used to sustain European settlement in the 1650's. This small river defined the later existence of the city of Cape Town and it also generated the first water law in South Africa. The story of Camissa is one of modernity versus traditionalism and priviledge versus servitude, but it can also be one of reflexivity as we become aware of the unintended consequences of our actions and collectively do something to reverse these processes. How we decide to close the loop that this project gives us will tell us whether we collectively choose to use water to deepen our democracy and create a more just society, or whether we choose to continue abusing this resource, ultimately to our own peril as a species. For more information about this flagship project click here and here.

Full details of my professional network and some recommendations of my past work can be downloaded from LinkedIn, which I keep reasonably current. To access LinkedIn please click here:

Some of my concerns over the complex issue of managing Acid Mine Drainage are contained in this article from Creamers Mining Weekly. To access the article please click here.

For a PDF copy of my Doctorate, hosted on the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database at Oregon State University, please click here:

I serve on the Editorial Board of a new journal called Water Alternatives where we encourage out of the box thinking in our quest for solutions to the complex problems we currently face in the international water sector. To access the Water Alternatives home page please click here:

I serve the World Water Council in the role of Editor (Africa) of their official journal Water Policy under Dr. Jerome Delli-Pricscoli (Editor in Chief) from the US Army Corps of Engineers. I invite submissions from any serious scholar with an interest in making the management of the African water sector more robust by means of policy strengthening. To access the Water Policy portal click here:

I serve the International Water Resource Association (IWRA) in the role of Editor of their official journal Water International under Prof. James Nickum (Editor in Chief) from the Asian Water and Resources Institute in Japan. I invite submissions from any serious scholar with an interest in improving the management of Transboundary Waters.

I am involved with the production of a TV documentary program called Running Dry - South Africa. This has grown out of my earlier involvement in the original Running Dry program where Jim Thebaut was the Producer and Jane Seymour did the narration. For access to the Running Dry - South Africa website please click here. To download a PDF file please click here. To access the promotional video please click here and here.

Some of the rough cuts from the original Running Dry that did not make it into the final program are available here. These give an insight into my professional thinking about specific water and development-related problems. The interviews are being conducted by Jim Thebaut the producer of Running Dry:

Turton_Int_4_wTC.mp4

Turton_Int_6_wTC.mp4

Turton_Int_7_wTC.mp4

During the preparation for the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto, I was involved in the production of a TV documentary called Pumping Pressure. This documentary gives some insight into the impact that gold mining has had on the national water resources.

http://www.tve.org/cc/doc.cfm?aid=924

At about the same time as the run-up to the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto, I was involved in a TV documentary film on the Okavango River and the Jordan River called Boiling Point, which is available here:

http://www.tve.org/cc/doc.cfm?aid=928

http://voyager.uvm.edu/bibs/bid1408496.html

As a scientist I have migrated from a pure research environment to an applied research environment, specifically with respect to the private sector as an element of the solution. In this regard I am trying to understand the evolving South African Water Crisis as a sub-set of the emerging Global Water Crisis. For those interested in understanding business opportunities associated with water please follow this link:

http://www.investmentu.com/research/water.pdf

As a Veteran I was invited to participate in the Missing Voices Oral History Project being run by Wits University, where I donated a number of hours of taped interview available in MP3 format.

 


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