Mike Young

Background

About Mike Young

I hold a Research Chair in Water, Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Adelaide, was the Founding Executive Director of its Environment Institute, am a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society. I am an Honorary Professor at the University College London and a Research Fellow with Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. As a result of an Australian Government endowment, each year Harvard University appoints one person to the Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair in Australian Studies. I was appointed to this Chair for the 2013/14 academic year. At Harvard, I taught a a course on transformational environmental policy reform. I am best known for my contribution to the development of robust water and environmental policies - in the Murray Darling Basin and in the western USA. I recently released a framework for the design of water and management abstraction regimes that I consider to be internationally applicable. More recently, I have begun to focus on climate change and energy policy reform opportunities In the past, I have led teams that developed frameworks for a greenhouse gas emission trading system in Australia; fishery management in NSW; biodiversity conservation on private land; and rangeland management in NSW, SA and the NT. For three years, I worked on the integration of agricultural and environmental policies with the OECD. I played a key role in establishing Australia’s National Land and Water Resources Audit. I am a member of the Global Water Partnership’s Technical Committee and was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Water Security. In 2010/11, I led the water component of a UNEP study on opportunities to pursue green growth strategies. In 2006, with Jim McColl, I was awarded the Land and Water Australia Eureka Award for Water Research.