Dr Ella Lawton

Dr Ella Lawton is the Regional Programmes Manager at Environment Southland, leading major initiatives that strengthen Murihiku Southland’s environmental resilience and community wellbeing. She oversees Council’s involvement in the Whakamana te Waituna Trust, the council’s Property Strategy, including the use of nature credits to achieve regional outcomes, and floodplain management planning.  

She recently led the first phase of Murihiku Slow the Flow, a pilot testing integrated catchment-scale nature-based solutions for flood risk mitigation and wider regional values. Central to her work is bringing together diverse stakeholders, disciplines, and worldviews to design place-based solutions that deliver in practice.

With over 25 years’ experience as a sustainability practitioner, Ella has worked across community development, governance, research, and teaching. She has served as a councillor for both Queenstown Lakes District Council and the Otago Regional Council, and in 2013 completed the New Zealand Footprint Project as her doctoral thesis, examining the ecological footprint of urban form and lifestyles to inform local government policy.

Ella believes in the power of community and in local solutions as a pathway to lasting change. Grounded in both scientific rigour and lived experience, she focuses on creating practical outcomes that endure.

She and her young family live on a five-hectare property in Waihōpai Invercargill, where they have built an off-grid tiny house and family home integrating renewable energy, ecological design, and regenerative land practices — a place they share with others as a space for learning and connection.

Ella will be speaking at the Slow the Flow - A Floodplain for the Future event at Wao Summit 2025.