Anthony Turton

Anthony Turton is a semi-retired specialist in water as a national security and corporate risk. He served as a conscripted soldier in the South African Defense Force (SADF) as a crew commander in the armoured corps (1 Special Service Battalion, School of Armour, 2 Light Horse Regiment, 81 Armoured Brigade). He was later part of a special operations unit within the National Intelligence Service (NIS) where he was deeply involved in a series of special operations that provided the intelligence support to the ending of hostilities associated with the liberation wars in Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique. He was directly involved in sensitive intelligence operations that enabled the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) to negotiate a new democratic transition to peace. He became a founding member of the South African Secret Service (SASS) in 1995 where he served as Deputy Head of a Technoeconomic Intelligence Unit (C13), and later as Divisional Head of C11, Staff Officer within the Chief Directorate Covert Collection and Counter Intelligence. As the Cold War ended and a new national security paradigm was needed, he pioneered the field of water as a national security risk. His master's thesis was on the Zambezi River and his Doctorate was on the management of the transboundary rivers to which South Africa is a riparian state. He served as Executive Director of the International Water Resource Association (IWRA) and deputy governor of the World Water Council. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Water Policy, the official journal of the World Water Council. He has consulted to the institutional investment and banking industries, the insurance industry, the mining industry, the food and beverage industry, and national government on water as a risk (and opportunity). He is a fellow of the Water Institute of Southern Africa (WISA) and a former Divisional Fellow at the Natural Resource and Environment (NRE) business unit in the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). He serves on the board of various companies with an interest in technologies related to the water sector. His current areas of research are the use of constructed wetlands for the management of complex aquatic waste streams, and he holds a patent in a technology related to this field. He is also writing about the national security challenges faced by countries that are water and technologically constrained.