Dr. Max Finlayson

Max Finlayson is a wetland ecologist with extensive experience nationally and internationally in the science and management responses to water pollution, mining and agricultural impacts, invasive species, climate change, and human well-being and wetlands. He was Director of the Institute for Land, Water and Society at Charles Sturt University from 2008 - 2019. He remains an Adjunct Professor with Charles Sturt University and at the University of New South Wales, and has an honorary appointment at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands. His previous employers include the International Water Management Institute, Australian Department of Environment, CSIRO, and the predecessor of Wetlands International.

He has participated in global assessments such as those conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the Global Environment Outlook, and Water Management in Agriculture, and since the early 1990s was a technical adviser to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. He has been actively involved in environmental NGOs and scientific societies and has worked with government, community-based organisations, and with industry to investigate the causes of ecosystem change and management responses, including restoration and the participation of local communities.

Underlying these activities is a concerted effort to improve the collection of evidence for addressing complex ecological issues and providing guidance to managers and policy makers recognising that social, economic and ecological issues are inter-dependent and operate across multiple scales, particularly when dealing with regional sustainable development.