Chris is a Professor of Practice at the Monash Sustainable Development Institute with a focus on water governance and liveable futures.

He is nationally recognized for his leadership in waterway and urban water management and for his contribution to establishing Melbourne as a world leader in water sensitive urban design. He has previously held roles as General Manager at Melbourne Water and CEO of the Office of Living Victoria before joining Monash University.

Chris has contributed to advancing water and urban planning practice through a number of other recent roles including as chair of several Ministerial advisory committees that have led to significant planning and legislative reforms.

In 2019 he was appointed by the Minister for Water to chair the Birrarung Council, a bicultural statutory body to act as the ‘voice for the Yarra River’. The Birrarung Council, which includes four Elders of Wurundjeri and Bururong Traditional Owners, was established under the Yarra River Protection Act (Willip-gin Birrarung murron) 2017, which also designates the Yarra River as a ‘living entity’.  This is the first legislation of its kind in Australia and was a key recommendation of the Yarra Protection Ministerial Advisory Committee which Chris chaired. 

Chris is also currently a non-executive Director of Barwon Water, Victoria’s largest regional urban water corporation and was a Commissioner and Chairperson of the Victorian Environmental Water Holder until 2023.

In 2022, Chris received the Paul Jerome award from the Victorian Planning and Environmental Law Association in recognition of his contribution to the sustainable development of cities over the last two decades.

Dr Erin O’Donnell is a Senior Lecturer and ARC Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne Law School. She is a water law and policy expert, with over 20 years of experience in the public and private sectors. She is recognized internationally for her research into the legal rights for rivers, a growing transnational movement. Erin’s research explores examples in Australia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Bangladesh, Canada, the USA and Aotearoa New Zealand to identify the opportunities and potential pitfalls of legal personhood for nature.

Erin is also recognised for her work on Indigenous rights to water. She works in partnership with Indigenous Peoples in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, the USA and Scandinavia to amplify their voices and develop new ways to care for waterways. In 2023, Erin commenced an Australian Research Council-funded fellowship to explore the opportunity of treaty to address aqua nullius, increase Traditional Owner power and resources in water, and create more sustainable and legitimate settler state water laws.

Since 2018, Erin has been a member of the Birrarung Council, the voice of the Yarra River. She has also worked for the World Bank, examining water markets and their role in water security and sustainable development. Her book, Legal Rights for Rivers: Competition, Collaboration and Water Governance is available from Routledge.

Ross is a founder, Director and past Chair of the Alluvium Group. Ross is responsible for the assessment, design and review of major water resource and waterway management programs and projects through Australia and into South East Asia. With over 35 years experience in water resource and waterway management, Ross specialises in working with clients and stakeholders to develop programs of waterway and water resource management that achieve agreed objectives based on an understanding of the fundamental stream processes at work.  He is regarded by his peers as a national leader in stream management science and has an innate ability to communicate complex water and waterway processes in layman’s terms.

Ross is an author of the recently released “Technical Guidelines for Waterway Management”, a technical manual on the design and implementation of stream management works for the State Government of Victoria. He is the lead or a co-author of the over 20 peer reviewed professional papers in the field of stream and floodplain assessment and design. Papers include the outcomes of industry leading research in areas such as the role of vegetation in reducing flood related channel change, environmental water policy and practice, and stream geomorphic processes. 

Ross has conducted training courses in Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland on the application and implementation of the principles of geomorphic channel design. Ross founded and continues to lecture at Wise Waterways an annual 5 day stream restoration workshop held in Beechworth Victoria. In the post workshop feedback from a recent stream management course, one participant described the training course as ‘the best course I have ever attended’.

Ross is an inaugural fellow of the Peter Cullen Water and Environment Trust Leadership Program and was Chair of the organising committee for the 6^th and 7^th Australian Stream Management Conferences.

Celeste Morgan is Arup’s Australasia Integrated Water Management leader with 20 years’ experience in IWM and sustainable water resource planning. Celeste brings together a unique blend of skills and experience in environmental engineering, economics, sustainability and planning that gives her a unique appreciation of how water can shape cities and regions. Celeste has led the development of key green infrastructure business cases and design typologies for Victorian State Government, Department of Transport and LGAs. She is an expert in design for passive irrigation and WSUD and was also a research integration leader for cost-benefit evaluations of water sensitive cities. 

A lifecycle perspective to deliver valued services

During this session, the panel discussion, facilitated by Frédéric Blin, will explore the value of taking a whole-of-life, systemic approach to deliver balanced social, environmental and economic outcomes. This would including exploring the relationship between planning, design and construction decisions with longer term considerations for the delivery of valued outcomes for stakeholders through the full lifecycle management of the assets.