James Lewis, Director of Intercoastal Consulting, is a certified practicing civil engineer with over 15 years of experience specialising in coastal engineering throughout Australasia and across the Pacific. He has a broad knowledge of coastal protection design, integrated coastal management and surf amenity. James’s skills extend outside the office where he has led large-scale metocean deployments, analysing the data captured in the field to calibrate numerical models used to inform coastal design.
He has focussed the last 10 years of his career on working in Small Island Developing States (SIDs) in climate change adaptation, concerned primarily with developing climate-resilient coastal protection. James aspires to see the design phase through to implementation; having supported procurement, and contracting and undertaken construction supervision on large projects in remote locations. He aims to provide value and support through the complete project lifecycle including the social, financial and institutional aspects of these projects, endeavoring to understand the administrative, governmental and funding mechanisms specific to each country and community and their relation to the delivery of a successful project.
Using his knowledge of coastal engineering, the ocean and the environment, James’ primary endeavor is to assist coastal communities most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
I am the Managing Director for the Pacific Science Solutions, a science consultancy service based in Suva, Fiji. I have a major in climatology (Bachelor of Science) from Macquarie University, Australia and my first job was as a scientific officer at the Fiji Meteorological Services in January 1993. I was heading the Fiji Climate Service Division by the time I left the service in 2001 and I moved to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. In January 2004, I became the Team Leader for an Australian Government funded project titled Pacific Islands Climate Prediction Project (PICPP). I continued managing the project until February 2012 when I moved onto to managing a much larger Australian funded (AUD 33.3M) program known Climate and Ocean Support Program in the Pacific (COSPPac).
Both projects involved at least 10 Pacific Islands. I have co-authored several WMO publications, and have been a member of a WMO working groups. I have been recognised as a regional expert on climate services.