Emily Barbour

AWP Mekong Program Lead 

Dr Emily Barbour joined the Australian Water Partnership as the Mekong Program Lead in 2022, leading strategic investment to support the adoption of climate resilient water policies, practices, and tools in the Mekong subregion. Emily has worked in the water sector for over 15 years, both within Australia and internationally. Emily’s work has focused on collaboratively generating knowledge and tools to support decision making for complex environmental challenges.

She previously worked as a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO, where she co-led the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office’s Basin-scale Monitoring and Evaluation program, which evaluates the ecological outcomes from Australia’s investment in Commonwealth environmental water within the Murray-Darling Basin. Emily has worked on projects in South Asia and the Pacific, including water resource modelling to inform basin planning, modelling of flood embankment investment decisions to support equitable investment, and knowledge brokering to increase resilience to climate change and other future risks.

Emily has supported science excellence through chairing the CSIRO Land and Water Science Council, as a member of the CSIRO Early and Mid-Career Researcher Committee, the supervision of students, and teaching on the University of Oxford’s Water Science, Policy and Management MSc/MPhil program.