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Expert gained a BSc and a PhD, in 1975 and 1978 respectively, from the University of London. At around the time of finalising his PhD he took a three-month course in coral reef ecology at the Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory in Jamaica which began his long association with the Caribbean. It was here that he first noticed coral bleaching whilst diving which, although was not attributed to global warming at the time, was thought to be linked in some way to elevated water temperatures. With an emerging interest in climate change, in 1990, he published his first book “The Undersea World” in which he calculated the number of “environmental” refugees in Bangladesh likely to be affected by sea level rise.
He has worked in more than 175 countries on many environmental issues in coastal zone management, air and water quality, waste management, power, transportation, health, education, agriculture, fisheries and forests, natural resources and biodiversity, rural and urban development, industry, tourism, and governance.
Since 2003, climate change has been increasingly prevalent in his assignments and for the last 15 years or so, most assignments have had a climate change dimension, and more recently a gender emphasis too. Over time, and with so many countries studied regarding climate change issues, he has accumulated a, possibly unique, knowledge of how climate change impacts people, sectors and countries, resulting in his most recent publication Building Global Resilience (Springer, London, 267pp).
He has had the benefit of working from the Himalayas to the deepest parts of the ocean and across South America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Central, SE and South Asia and the across the Pacific Ocean. Working within governments, and talking to thousands of stakeholders.
He regularly works across a security nexus of water, energy, food, and land within a context of governance, work, health and education. He has begun to embrace robotics and machine learning (artificial intelligence) since future climate change adaptation requires not only working across disciplinary boundaries, but also working vertically.
He was appointed as Full Professor in October 2018 by the UN University for Peace.