Donna Brown

Donna Brown is an experienced ESG specialist based in Tasmania Australia. She has over 30 years of work experience as an environmental and social specialist including leadership, operational and consulting roles in; hydropower, renewable energy, water resource management and mining with public and private sector organisations in Australia and SE Asia. She holds a B Sc in Environmental Management. Donna has over 20 years’ experience working in the hydropower industry in various roles. Since 2019 she has established and led the social and environmental programs and embedded HSS requirements on the proponent side for two large, proposed hydropower projects, including a pumped hydro project (750MW) and a major scheme redevelopment (190MW) in Tasmania. Prior to that, she managed environmental and social programs for a hydropower business with an integrated portfolio of 30 operating power stations. 

Donna has embedded the HSS requirements through options assessment, siting and design, environmental approvals, procurement and delivery readiness stages for proposed hydropower projects. She has been involved on the client side for a project H-SAP assessment and as a client she facilitated a trial catchment wide unofficial H-SAP assessment. Donna assisted with the development of early training manuals and delivery of early training for H-SAP assessors in the UK. She was part of the assessment team in 2012 (social topics) to assess the Murum 944MW Hydropower Project in Sarawak Malaysia. Drawing on this experience, Donna consulted in the Mekong Region over 4 years to develop and implement the Rapid Basin-wide Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Tool (RSAT) working with ADB, GIZ, WWF and the MRC. During this time, she led multi—stakeholder dialogues and hydropower sustainability assessments (RSAT) in 9 lower Mekong sub-catchments in Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand including a transboundary hydropower sustainability assessment. She is currently working as an independent consultant.

Language: English

Email: donna.brown144@gmail.com