Richard Morris
Chief consultant, Richard Morris & Associates
Desalination's leading diplomat, a former Scottish civil servant and expert adviser on the Middle East peace process.
Richard joined Scottish desal pioneers Weir Westgarth in 1974 as head of R&D, then chief engineer, working mainly on Middle East plant. In 1983 he moved to the Scottish Development Agency, a government-backed body promoting economic growth, as an energy and environmental technology specialist.
In 1993 Richard went solo, forming Richard Morris & Associates. In this capacity he has advised the European Commission, UNESCO, the World Bank and UK and overseas governments. Despite or perhaps because of his previous Arab Middle East connections, he has advised the Israel-OPT peace process regarding water for Palestine. He retired in 2010.
One of desal's amateur historians, Richard seems to have accidentally secured the preservation of the only known fragments of Bob Silver's draft autobiography as Silver sent them to him for comment before his death.
Richard was a founding co-president of the EDS, and involved in renewable energy and energy conservation as far back as 1985, when even the term 'global warming' was barely known.