WaterShip – a PCT National Webinar
AN INVITATION
‘WaterShip: How can water help cool the climate quickly, safely, and at scale?’ – A PCT National Webinar
The Peter Cullen Trust is pleased to invite you to a learning and imagining and networking session centred on exploring what it could mean to rebuild and re-member small and local water cycles wherever you live and work, across Australia and beyond.
Our guest speakers, Dr Katie Ross and Professor Emerita Cynthia Mitchell AO bring their systemic integration skills to the science behind and the possibility enabled by the question: how is water a driver of climate?
Katie and Cynthia will present a mind-expanding story of how ecology and climate science come together around the water we cannot see. This is also a heart-expanding story too, because it offers extraordinary agency and a Vaclav Havel kind of hope for shifting the dial on climate change.
- At best, it can cool the global climate.
- At a minimum, it offers improved soil health and water security (and improved nutritional integrity and productivity in our food production), alongside reduced local temperatures and improved resilience in the face of fires, floods, and droughts.
Globally, the idea is gaining ground – there’s a UNESCO report in preparation for the 2026 UN Water conference.
To kick-off our time together, our speakers will share the science behind this ‘bio-hydro’ leg of climate. They will also share a few insights from events elsewhere on this topic – their Panel and Workshop at AWA’s Connected By Water Conference in Perth, their Melbourne Watership Workshop, Katie’s ‘Thinking Like Water’ film clubs etc.
Then we’ll open the floor to hear how this relates to your own initiatives.
We’ll wrap up by thinking about broader implications, what it might take, and how we might come together to leverage each others’ efforts.
We do hope you can join us.
EVENT DETAILS – 2026 COURAGEOUS CONVERSATION #2
What: ‘WaterShip: How can water help cool the climate quickly, safely, and at scale?’
Date: Wednesday 19th August
Time: 10.30am-12.00pm AEST
Where: Online via Teams (the link to join will be shared when you register)
Please note local times:
- AWST – 8.30-10.00am
- ACST – 10.00-11.30pm
- AEST – 10.30am-12.00pm
NB: Speaker presentations will be recorded and available to view post-event; Q&A following will not be recorded and Chatham House rule will apply.
This event is open and free to attend for Fellows, Friends and supporters of the Peter Cullen Trust, by invitation.
MEET OUR GUEST SPEAKERS
Professor Emerita Cynthia Mitchell AO is respected globally as a thought and practice leader concerning how we transform ourselves, our systems, and our institutions towards regenerative futures.
Cynthia’s outstanding contributions to water, environment and community have spanned more than three decades; she is recognised as an exceptional inter-disciplinary and inter-generational leader. Her worklife journey has been driven by a passion to find longer levers to make more of a difference.
Cynthia’s story is unusual in academic terms – instead of narrowing, she has steadily expanded her focus, starting with biotechnology and engineering and opening to encompass sustainability, learning and change, economics, systems, and leadership.
Over 20 years, she helped grow the Institute for Sustainable Futures at UTS from a fledgling into a world class entity, whilst she delivered more than a hundred collaborative research projects that enabled her industry and government partners to make practical sustainability improvements.
Her desire to do more, to go deeper, saw Cynthia step away from the Institute in 2021 to start her own business, the good ancestor, aimed at doing precisely that.
In January 2024, Cynthia was awarded the Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to the environment and shortly thereafter commenced her current role as the third Chair of the Peter Cullen Water and Environment Trust.
Dr Katie Ross is a leader, writer, researcher and educator. She is passionate about regenerative and relational processes of growing our food, creating community and transforming our selves.
Even after working in the sustainability and research field for almost 20 years, Katie continues to be curious about, and collaboratively experiments with, ways to create change towards sustainable futures. As an independent consultant and Adjunct Fellow, Katie leads and supports transdisciplinary action research and transformative learning projects that promote individual, social and systemic (i.e. governance, services, learning systems) transformation.
Katie co-curates diverse approaches for each unique situation and project, and engages a ‘palette’ of processes that lead to meaningful insights and change.
One of Katie’s areas of expertise is transformative sustainability learning, which provides principles and processes for creating positive individual and social change. She incorporates this approach into innovative methods of capacity building and stakeholder engagement.
We look forward to your company on the 19th August.
In 2026, the PCT National Webinar Series – “Courageous Conversations” – is generously supported by 