Shaping the Future of Water and Climate: A Conversation with Matthew Coulton, Water Management Expert at Ricardo

We are excited to welcome Matthew Coulton as our newest Associate Director for Ricardo’s Australian Water and Environment team. With a distinguished career spanning senior roles in the Australian and New South Wales Governments, Matthew brings deep expertise in water science and climate science, public policy, and public sector leadership. Most recently, Matthew was the General Manager of Agriculture and Water at the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology and held several national and international leadership roles, including Australia’s Hydrology Adviser to the World Meteorological Organisation. During this conversation, Matthew shares insights from his journey and his vision for addressing evolving water and climate risks in Australia and around the world.

Can you tell us a bit about your professional background and what led you to this role?

“Throughout my career, I’ve worked across the breadth of the science-policy spectrum. I’ve had high level roles advising government Ministers working on big picture policy direction and I’ve worked on deeply technical projects with some of the world’s top climate and water scientists. My favourite place to work is right in the middle, providing decision makers with the right information to make big, important decisions. You also need to help them explain those decisions in a clear, compelling way to a range of stakeholders. When you get alignment amongst scientists, policy makers, regulators, industries and the public, that’s when you get progress. It’s hard and it happens rarely but when it does it is incredibly rewarding.

I’ve joined Ricardo because I think it’s the best place for me to contribute to solving big challenges around climate risk and adapation, and water security. Solving these problems requires smart, hard-working people from different disciplines to work together to come up with implementable solutions that can be clearly communicated. Ricardo has the right mix of incredible people who share my passions and are always willing to roll up their sleeves and get to work.”

What key trends or changes do you see impacting the water and environment sectors today?

“Problems that were once water problems are now everything problems. Energy security requires water security. Climate change mitigation requires water security. Climate change adaptation requires water security. Healthy populations and livable cities require water security. Increasingly, water security is becoming tied to conflicts and geopolitical stability. 

To solve these problems we need to break down the traditional notion of a “sector” and develop ways for experts from across many disciplines to work together with communities. This requires a rethink of how industry sectors traditionally innovate. My way of looking at it is that if I find myself in a room of like-minded people, I’m probably in the wrong room.”

What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve encountered in your career, and how did you address them?

“I wouldn’t say I’ve had challenges, just learning experiences! A downside of my passion for the topics I work on is that I can get a bit too excited about coming up with a solution as quickly as possible rather than focusing on bringing together the right people and processes to solve the problem collectively. I’ve seen so much great work, particularly from talented scientists and researchers go to waste because it’s not aligned with policy processes, is not accessible to impacted stakeholders, or doesn’t answer the right questions. It can be deflating to see opportunities to make progress missed when you know all the pieces are there but they haven’t been put together in a coherent way. 

I’ve learned to defer my bias to jump straight to the science part of a problem and rather start by ensuring I properly understand the problem and the people involved. This way when I get to the science I can be confident in its value. 

I’ve also learned that I often add more value if I take off my budding scientist hat and use my communication and strategy skills to plan, coordinate and facilitate in such a way that enables groups of people way smarter than I am to solve way bigger problems than I can.”

What attracted you to Ricardo, and what are you most looking forward to in your new role?

“There are three things about Ricardo that attracted me:

• The people are really smart and passionate about their work but they don’t waste time fussing about what work they do and don’t want to do. The culture is one where people muck in, get the job done and take pride in the quality of the end product.
• Ricardo has a big focus on water, which has been my main area of interest, but it has lots of other amazing capabilities that can be brought together to solve wicked water and climate problems – economics, policy, regulation, infrastructure, modelling, digital. Ricardo also brings together expertise from all over the world, which is helpful when many parts of the world are grappling with similar problems.
• I really want to create accessible and scalable advisory services that cut through the growing noise around “climate risk”. 

‘Put simply, I want to help organisations of all shapes and sizes to make pragmatic decisions that set them up to be resilient and productive in the future.'

When I made this pitch to my new bosses they were really supportive, so here I am!”

Ricardo is thrilled to welcome Matthew to our team and we look forward to helping more organisations on their path to sustainable water management. If you’d like to have a discussion with Matthew on your bespoke needs, please do reach out to us at info@ricardo.com.