Dear friends and colleagues,

We are heartbroken to inform you that Douglas – Professor Douglas Paton &  Low, Jin Fu (Chinese name Douglas had been given and was proud of) – is not physically among us anymore. He reclaimed his power and choose to pass over on Monday, 24 April 2023.

As he wished, Douglas was at home surrounded in a circle and held by his mum, partner, sister, niece and nephews imbued with deepest love listening to “Leaving Glen Affric” when he left. He ‘walked his talk’ right to the very end of his earthly life. Douglas passed over content, fulfilled and at peace.

Thank you all so very much to all of you who have been praying for Douglas and sending healing energies these last several years as he was battling cancer – Douglas was so appreciative and grateful for you thinking of him and supporting him in his battle. Your caring gave Douglas great strength and comfort, and led to him being physically among us for another nearly four years.

Douglas’ wish was to “just fade away”. He only wanted to have a small private celebration of his life and farewell. Accordingly, his family and partner honoured and mourned Douglas following ancient Scottish traditions. Six men carried Douglas in a coffin with the image of the country he grew up in and loved into his living room to the tune of “Leaving Glen Affric”.They placed the coffin on the tartan of his clan to connect Douglas to his ancestors. His mum placed a flower bouquet with him that she had made with Scottish flowers including thistles (Scottish national flower). His partner placed a wreath she had made of Australian foliage and flowers, which he loved, and red roses. The family then toasted Douglas with his favourite Scottish Whiskey and shared and honoured key aspects of Douglas’ rich life and contributions – personally and globally. The family bid their final farewell to Douglas by listening to the song he wanted to share “Leaving something behind”, saying Celtic blessings and toasting Douglas once more.

There were so many wonderful facets to Douglas. He and his life were tremendously rich and deep. Most of all Douglas was and always will be a deeply loved, respected and appreciated son, brother, partner, uncle, great-uncle, friend, collaborator, colleague, and neighbour. Douglas truly lived an authentic, rich and fulfilled life. He accomplished all his dreams, learnings and destiny. He was and will live forth in our diverse rich memories as a loving and caring, strong yet gentle, authentic, gracious, and loyal human being who lived with great integrity and great sense of puropse. Douglas contributed so much to humanity and our earth. He was a brilliant humble, committed and wise scholar – researcher; educator; supervisor for honours, masters and PhD students; and advisor to diverse national and international organisations.

Douglas was a Professor at Charles Darwin University, Australia, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra, a Senior Research Fellow at the Bandung Resilience Development Initiative (Indonesia), and a Research Fellow at the Joint Centre for Disaster Research (New Zealand). In 2005-2006, he was the Australian delegate to the UNESCO Education for Natural Disaster Preparedness in the Asia-Pacific. He was a member of the UNISDR now UNDRR) RIA sub-committee (2012-2016) and served on the Psychosocial Advisory Committee for the Christchurch earthquake (2011-2013). In 2014 his role as a Technical Advisor on Risk Communication with the WHO helped develop the community engagement program for the Ebola response program in Sierra Leone. His research develops and tests theories of adaptive and resilient capacity in communities using all-hazards and cross-cultural approaches. His current work included developing transformative approaches to community capacity building during disaster recovery and using the visual and performing arts to support disaster recovery. Douglas is listed in the Stanford University/Elsevier BV list of the top 2% most cited researchers worldwide. In 2021 and 2022, the Australian Research Review listed Douglas as the top Australian researcher in the Emergency Management/DRR field of research. Douglas has a Scopus h-index of 47 and the corresponding h-index on Research Gate is 62. Douglas published 24 books and about 200 peer-reviewed papers and chapters with over 260 collaborators from across the world. He has served as Editor of the Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies (Founding Editor), Disaster Prevention and Management and the International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters. He sat on several journal editorial boards, including the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Disasters, the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.

Douglas leaves behind an extraordinary body of knowledge and wisdom in the form of theories regarding all-hazards and cross-cultural individual and collective adaptive capacities. Douglas gifted us with the essence of his work in his last book “Advanced Introduction to Disaster Risk Reduction”. Humanity can choose to use his wisdom to reduce the risk of disasters, and to empower and enable people to (re)claim and (re)develop their individual and collective capacities be safe and to live in harmony with nature as Douglas intended. We, as the people he travelled with, can choose to use, build upon and further expand his work individually and collectively.

Douglas interacted with, experienced and touched a great variety of friends and colleagues around the world. Douglas always allowed, empowered and honoured unique and diverse ways of being. In this spirit, we invite and encourage you to grieve, celebrate and honour Douglas in meaningful and culturally appropriate ways that you as individuals and groups around the world see fit. For instance, Douglas’ Australian Indigenous Yolŋu kin will do a Bungle Ceremony. His closest New Zealand and Hawaiian colleagues and friends will watch the sunset over the ocean drinking whisky and smoking a cigar. Other friends and colleagues will honour Douglas with a minute of silence, poems and paintings.

We also invite you to express your sentiments, favourite experiences, celebrations, and photos in this virtual worldwide gathering space, which will connect us all. Whether you wish to leave a short tribute, or write a longer story with a photograph, you can do this on Douglas’ memorial website here at ‘Forever Missed’. We would all love to hear your shared stories.

To honour Douglas and to continue his critically important work, his family, partner and closest collaborators created a “Douglas Paton Memorial Scholarship”. Douglas’ family and partner will contribute funds to start this scholarship and award. Massey University’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research (JCDR), which Douglas co-created and which houses the Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies that Douglas established, will host the “Douglas Paton Memorial Scholarship”. We intend to gather annually online to award this scholarship, and to honour and expand Douglas’ work. Rather than sending flowers to Douglas’ family and partner, we invite you to donate to the “Douglas Paton Memorial Scholarship” here if you wish to do so (please make sure you select Douglas’ scholarship under ‘Designation’).

Douglas Paton’s passing is unspeakably sad and painful for all of us who had the great honour, privilege and joy to travel parts of his journey here on Earth with him. We all will miss Douglas terribly - and Douglas will live forever in our hearts and minds, and live on through us...

With great love & gratitude

Douglas’ family, Petra Buergelt, David Johnston, John Violanti, Julia Becker, Fantina Tedim, Li-ju Jang, Emma Hudson-Doyle, Chris Gregg, Saut Salaga