John Matthews
climatewater.bsky.social
John Matthews
@climatewater.bsky.social
Resilience scientist. Water-climate-nature nexus. ED Alliance for Global Water Adaptation. Climate adaptation innovator, essayist, implementer. Overfrequent globetracker, but lounging in economy class.
What happened on adaptation and resilience at COP30? Reflections from a bruised COP veteran

open.substack.com/pub/deepresi...
Hot Tubbing in Belém
From Buzz to Breakthrough with the Baku Water Dialogue Negotiations
open.substack.com
November 29, 2025 at 8:31 PM
Part 2 of 3: Diagnosing conservation in our current climate
Part 2: Is Conservation Hurting Ecosystems?
Moving Towards a Resilience Ethic
open.substack.com
October 12, 2025 at 10:56 PM
Has insurance become a substitute for effective public policy and shared decisions around climate adaptation and resilience?

open.substack.com/pub/deepresi...
The Moral Hazards of Resilience
Does Insuring Against Risk Promote Resilience?
open.substack.com
October 11, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Moving towards a new generation of thinking about climate change and our relationship with ecosystems.
Part 1 of 3: Climate Change Is Killing Conservation
Are We Hurting Ecosystems and Species as We Try to Protect Them?
open.substack.com
October 8, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Guest essay by Nikolai Sindorf: Two Towers that Can Obscure Resilience
open.substack.com/pub/deepresi...
Guest essay by Nikolai Sindorf: Two Towers that Can Obscure Resilience
Flowing in a Digital Age
open.substack.com
September 16, 2025 at 3:17 PM
A great essay by my friend/colleague Nikolai Sindorf. Are some of our tools for understanding #water and #climatechange actually obscuring us from seeing impacts and useful action? His insights come from twenty years of experience

www.alliance4water.org/blog-posts/t...
The Two Towers - flowing into the digital age
This essay is from AGWA’s September issue of the AGWA Guide Newsletter.
www.alliance4water.org
September 15, 2025 at 4:30 PM
The Weekly Anthropocene just published a great interview between myself and Sam Matey-Costa - why #resilience is important to #climateaction more generally, how we can use it to leverage #climatemitigation and better the Global North and South

substack.com/home/post/p-...
Interview: John Matthews of the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation
"It’ll probably take us a century to just fully absorb the concept of resilience."
substack.com
September 15, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Can water and history connect climate science with climate action?

open.substack.com/pub/deepresi...
Resilience: Theory and Praxis
Lessons from Paleoecology and Archeology
open.substack.com
August 16, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Is deep resilience breaking through? Evidence from Los Angeles
open.substack.com/pub/deepresi...
Is deep resilience breaking through? Evidence from Los Angeles
Dethroning Efficiency and Conservation in Climate Adaptation
open.substack.com
August 15, 2025 at 12:57 PM
Can we justify “natural” security when national security is at stake?

This week, the UK’s prime minister said that they need to invest in more submarines and tanks even if that means reducing the budgets for foreign aid and domestic social welfare. Can these agendas align?
June 6, 2025 at 7:29 PM
This Thursday, I'm moderating a panel of economists worried about hashtag#climatechange. Me? I am a freaking useless ecologist. Never the twain shall meet? Sometimes they converge.

That's my essay. I hope you find the glue & connection.

Upgrade your shoes. Downgrade your suit, dude.
May 6, 2025 at 10:44 PM
April 6, 2025 at 10:24 PM
I've just returned from Sri Lanka and Mexico, talking with big agriculture corporations and philanthropies, colleagues focused on #economic #development and #resilience, and tuktuk drivers. In brutal time, I found kindness in the night sky open.substack.com/pub/deepresi...
The Night Sky
Resilience in Kindness
open.substack.com
April 5, 2025 at 7:08 PM
How do find our center in a time of climate, political and economic turmoil? Avoid the center! Become unbalanced deepresilience.substack.com/p/a-case-for...
A Case for Unbalancing
The substack is based on two big ideas.
deepresilience.substack.com
April 5, 2025 at 6:38 PM
Just headed back from Baku - after the election thunderstorms of Germany and the US and mixed COP outcomes, where are we now?

I took a stab at thinking about my work and that of my partners in a swiftly tilting landscape.

www.alliance4water.org/blog-posts/t...
The First Draft of Prehistory — Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA)
The day after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, I walked into my German language class to see my teacher watching us carefully. She was older than most of my professors — an Austrian woman raised in Vienn...
www.alliance4water.org
November 24, 2024 at 1:12 AM