Subak Australia funds its first cohort of Members and Fellows
May 2022: Australia’s arm of Subak, announced its initial intake of Members and Fellows today.
The first intake is a 10-strong cohort of members and fellows. These talented individuals are compiling data on food security threats, weather patterns, greenhouse gas emissions, sequestration, the social and ecological impact of resource usage, and comparative climate policies.
Subak Australia founder and Director, Chris Wilson says: “There are very few challenges that are truly global by nature. Climate change is one of them. Our purpose at Subak is to find smart solutions that we can publicly accelerate.
“Subak is quickly building an ecosystem of individuals and organisations to work globally to openly share their data to influence public policy and mass-market behaviour.”
Successful pilot in WA
Sustainability Intelligence developer, Perth-based Open Corridor, is one of Subak Australia’s four inaugural Members. Led by Josh Hopkins – TEDx speaker and winner of the ‘Sustainable Entrepreneurship 2021’ award – Open Corridor has developed software tools to help cities measure their environmental footprint against the planet’s nine life support systems, e.g. water, the biosphere, land use and air quality, etc.
A successful pilot program with local government authorities in Western Australia demonstrates how cities across the country can build resilience in their communities, the economy, and the environment.
Open Corridor’s Founding Director, Josh Hopkins says: "We believe in a community-led approach to transformation; where all Australians are equipped with inclusive, science-based tools to guide our transition to a healthy, prosperous and sustainable world.”
Wilson says: “We are so impressed with the quality of our applicants. We will initially provide members with two unrestricted grants of $25,000 to work through their first three-month start-up phase. And as they accelerate and grow, we provide up to a further $100,000 over the next six-months.”
Saving the reef
Stuart Brown is one of six Subak Australia’s inaugural Fellows. A post-doctoral ecologist with the Universities of Adelaide and Copenhagen, Brown’s research focuses on the impacts of rapid climate change on the oceans and the world’s coral reefs. In this project he confines the area covered to Latitudes 400 North to 400 South, so covering Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
The reality is that the majority of the world’s people depend on coral reefs, for food, protection and incomes – it is estimated that a staggering half a billion people depend on the reefs in Brown’s project scope!
As a skilled data scientist, Brown’s ability to update the current 1000-year-old datasets with ecological, environmental, and climatological data will provide authorities with accurate climate and environmental change data and model the impact on biodiversity out to 2100.
Given the reef is exposed to increasingly severe and frequent marine heatwaves that are causing mass bleaching events, and threatening thousands of reef-associated species, and the services they provide to nature and people, this is important work.
Subak Australia’s support for Brown and the five other inaugural fellows includes a grant of $20,000 each, to help them continue their innovative, data-led projects to mitigate the impact of climate change on the planet.
Both fellows and members will also contribute to the global Data Cooperative that Subak is building.
Wilson says: Subak Australia will continue to expand our network of start-ups and find further ways to collaborate. This is our first year of operation in Australia and we’ve moved fast as there is no time to lose.
“We have established a world-class and uniquely Australian Advisory Board, as well as a program management team and senior part-time specialists and mentors.”
The Subak Australia Advisory Board comprises of:
Parry Agius – Managing Director, Board Member and Senior Indigenous Strategist and Representative
Cheryl Durant – Climate Emergency Strategist. Former Director of Preparedness and Mobilisation, and Global Change and Energy Sustainability Initiative Lead at the Australian Federal Government’s Department of Defence. Climate Council Advisor on Food Security etc.
Nicki Hutley – Independent Economist and Commentator, Board Member, and Climate Council Councillor. She is an expert faculty member (economics) at Singularity University, President of the Economics Society of Australia (NSW), and an advisory board member to the Financy Women’s Index.
Professor Andrew Lowe – The inaugural Director of the Environment Institute as well as Food Innovation and Chair of Plant Conservation Biology at the University of Adelaide. Andy is focused on climate and biodiversity and how best to do research in a way that gets taken up.
Professor James Watson – Professor of Conservation Science at the University of Queensland. He leads Green Fire Science (www.greenfirescience.com), whose mission is to develop applied research that links directly to the practice of conservation. He is the Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Science and Research Initiative.
For more information contact:
Louise Denver, Communications Advisor
louise@subak.org | louisedenver4@gmail.com
+(61) 414 889 857