Tony Colman (politician)

Anthony John Colman (born 23 July 1943) is a British businessman and politician who served as Labour member of Parliament for Putney, London from 1997 to 2005. At present Dr Colman is a Visiting Research Fellow at UCT EGS South Africa (Environment and Geographical Science Department, University of Cape Town), UEA WSRC UK (Water Security Research Centre, University of East Anglia) and the Columbia Water Center, Earth Institute, New York. His PhD (UEA 2013) is on surmounting the barriers to the delivery of WRM (Water Resource Management) and WSS (Water Supply and Sanitation) in Southern Africa and particularly Botswana.^[1] He has done fieldwork on the challenges to food security from declining soil moisture in the dry lands of South Africa, examining the supplier chain / farmer nexus, with comparators in the UK and USA, utilising conservation agriculture and water accountability reforms.^[2]

His academic work centres around the interface between water and food, and policy making processes resulting in legislative actions, affecting water and food management in an era of climate change. He is working in the US Congress,^[3] UK Parliament (and EU) and the South African Parliament (and PAP) and the IPU, with politicians, civil servants, farmers, together with business and civil society.

He also serves as a Councillor of the World Future Council (WFC^[4]) since 2007 and as the permanent representative of the WFC at the UN New York headquarters (2013–present). His work is on international policy making on water and food and climate change, with UN institutions, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation, particularly with regard to potential ramifications on migration and trade.

He is Co-editor of the 2017 Oxford University Press Handbook of Water, Food and Society (with Professor Tony Allan, Dr. Martin Keulertz and Brendan Bromwich). He is a non-executive director of Africa Practice Ltd^[5] (since 2006) and is Chair of Pupil Asset Ltd^[6] (from 2016).

Early life

He was educated at Paston Grammar School, Magdalene College, Cambridge (MA) and the University of East Anglia (MA; PhD).

Business career

Before being elected to Parliament he was a councillor and leader of London Borough of Merton from 1991 to 1997. He also had a successful career in business, which included being a director of the Burton Group.^[7]

Parliamentary career

Colman first stood for Parliament at South West Hertfordshire in 1979, but was beaten by the Conservative Geoffrey Dodsworth. He won Putney in the 1997 election, defeating David Mellor, but lost it in 2005 to Justine Greening.^[8]

His Parliamentary interests included trade and industry, the environment, pensions and finance. He is currently Associate Director of Africapractice, a corporate citizenship and communications consultancy. Since 2006, he is a founding member of the World Future Council.

References

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Tony Colman
• Tony Colman talks about the World Future Council on YouTube