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.
US Registered Civil Engineer and Certified Water Treatment Operator, with extensive Pacific Island (Hawaii, Guam, CNMI, Palau, RMI, FSM) Drinking Water (DW) and Water Resource Management (WRM) experience. 24 years with the US Environmental Protection Agency in a wide range of DW and WRM activities, in California, Hawaii and Micronesia. 2 years as the sole Engineer for the Palau Environmental Quality Protection Board, on all environmental programs. Experienced in all aspects of DW and WRM activities–project and program planning, management; monitoring and evaluation; water system/utility treatment, distribution, O&M assessment, engineering design, construction, operations; operator and management training, maintenance, financing; grant writing and grant oversight. Planning for and providing emergency response actions, for typhoons and other disasters, including Hurricane Katrina (USA); Typhoon Chata’an; (Guam); and Typhoon Haiyan (Palau).
Over 27 years of experience on international development projects, focusing on coastal management, ICZM, coastal adaption, climate policy, wetland biodiversity management and catchment management. Over 12 years’ experience of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) including programmes that involve participatory planning processes, conducting feasibility studies, the assessment climate change and small island state environmental management and the design of programme implementation involving climate change.Over 10 years’ experience in institutional assessment and identification of capacity and organisational constraints within public administration, private sector, civil society (mostly in small island states). Extensive knowledge of donor agency development policies relating to disaster risk, climate change and coastal adaptation. Strong working experience for SPREP since 2011 in Tuvalu, Tonga, Vanuatu, Cook Islands, Fiji, FSM, Samoa. Strong experience in many other SIDs globally.