Three years I took on the challenge of setting up the Environment Institute. Over the years that I have been doing this, I have missed the opportunity to do the policy research that I love. A new opportunity to pursue this research agenda has emerged and I have decided to seize it.

Early in the New Year, I will be moving to the Faculty of Professions to start, as one would predict, with some research on water. This will soon spread out to include climate change, biodiversity and other environmental policy issues. My academic focus will be on what economists call public choice theory. I lay terms this means about the search for guidelines about the best way to make transformational decisions that affect the future of human kind.

In this new role, I hope also to bring together some of the University’s social and humanity science research capacity and make it easier for these people to interact with people in the Environment Institute. I also plan to spend time helping to nurture some of the marine, biodiversity corridor and carbon initiatives that Simon Divecha and I have been developing.

The search for a new Director will start in the New Year. In the interim, Bob Hill will act as the Institute’s Director. I will be spending the last part of January in Europe attending two water management meetings.

In closing, I would like to thank everyone for the tremendous contributions that they have made. Collectively, we can be proud of what has been achieved.