Sharna Nolan works with the RLH as a Senior Knowledge Broker. She has a passion for working with scientists and research end users to ensure empirical research is accessible, relevant and useful for decision makers. She especially enjoys co-design research questions and methods to build equitable stakeholder participation and two-way learning opportunities to mobilise effort around critical natural resource issues.
Prior to joining the RLH, Sharna led the Climate Science Initiative within the WA Government to deliver the latest climate and hazard projections in partnership with state, inter-jurisdictional and federal climate scientists. She has previously acted as an advisor to government and multi-lateral agencies (UNDP, World Bank) to support sector, regional and national climate risk assessment, water management and decarbonisation projects in Australia, Asia, the Pacific and Europe. During this time, she co-authored the NT Climate Change Adaptation Action Plan and worked for CSIRO to lead pilots to trial collaborative water planning tools under the Tropical Rivers and Coastal Knowledge program.
From 2006 – 2023, she held senior management and expert positions in global think tanks to design and deliver complex, pro-poor and pro-women land conflict, deforestation, poverty alleviation and women’s empowerment programs in Afghanistan, East Africa, Canada and central Australia.
As a Senior Knowledge Broker for the RL hub, Sharna works with climate change and water management related projects, as well as those located across northern Australia’s tropical climate.
Sharna hopes to bring her expertise in climate change and stakeholder engagement to the resilience landscape hub. More importantly, she hopes to forge collaborative and enduring relationships between policy makers, land managers, traditional owners and scientists to ensure research processes, and intended outputs, are truly fit-for-purpose and mobilise collective action. By documenting case studies, success stories and failures, as well as output uptake, Sharna hopes to strengthen the link between research outputs and policy and/or management outcomes, documented through the testimonials of the research end users and participants.