Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Heidi Asbjornsen
Co-Chair of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Heidi is an Ecosystem Ecologist, with expertise in Ecohydrology, Plant Physiology, and Forestry. Her research focuses on understanding the underlying ecological processes that determine the capacity of temperate and tropical ecosystems to sustainably provide diverse benefits to society while maintaining resilience to land use and climate change, and how to apply this knowledge to developing approaches for the sustainable management of watershed for hydrologic and other ecosystem services. Her work is inherently highly interdisciplinary and collaborative, and in recent years has focused on integrating biophysical and social science research with broad stakeholder engagement to enhance Payment for Hydrologic Service programs.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
The Water Futures initiative represents an exciting and timely opportunity to build the international and transdisciplinary partnerships that are critical to developing effective local, regional, and global approaches for achieving sustainable watersheds and societies.
Monica Altamirano
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Mónica A. Altamirano, Ph.d., is a Public Private Partnership specialist at Deltares. She holds a PhD and MSc in Systems Engineering and Policy Analysis from Delft University of Technology. During her PhD she studied the technical, economic and institutional dimensions of road procurement strategies –with focus on Public Private Partnerships- and the preceding processes of road reform –liberalization and privatization- from a cross-national comparative perspective. The research included Finland, Spain and the Netherlands. Since 2010 joined that she joined Deltares her main research line is on making green Adaptation to Climate Change a financially viable concept for developing and emerging economies through diverse DRR and IWRM projects in Europe, Latin America and South East Asia. Recent projects include her work in Bangladesh on the use of Satellite Data services for Climate Risk Management in the Agriculture Sector –including services to the financial and insurance sectors- and the drafting of an implementation vision for an improved Flood Early Warning System. Last but not least the on-going work on Water Stewardship in Action for Integrated Water Resources Management.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
More information to come
Julia Martinez-Ortega
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Dr Julia Martinez-Ortega is a Senior lecturer at Leeds University, UK
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
More information to come
Joe Holden
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Professor Joseph Holden is Director of water@leeds, one of the world’s largest interdisciplinary water research centres. He is also the Research Dean of the Faculty of Environment at the University of Leeds and has held the Chair of Physical Geography since 2007. He has degrees from the University of Cambridge and a PhD from the University of Durham. His work has been awarded prizes and medals from the British Society for Geomorphology and the Leverhulme Trust and he has published > 150 peer reviewed papers, chapters and books (e.g. Water Resources: an integrated approach, Routledge 2014). He has led major research and impact projects on water, catchment management, peatlands and sustainable agriculture. His expertise is in soil, river and catchment hydrology and land management impacts. He currently leads the €8M Integrated Catchment Solutions Programme (iCASP) in the UK which focuses on generating socio-economic impacts from existing environmental science. He also leads and contributes to a wide range of other funded research projects from government, industry and charity organisations.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
More information to come
Viju James
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Founding Director, Pragmatix Research & Advisory Services, Private Limited Life Member, Indian Society for Ecological Economics Managing Trustee, Dr. Josef James Memorial Charitable Trust Founder Member, Water & Environmental Sanitation Network of India (WES-Net India).
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
More information to come
Robert Manson
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Robert Manson is from the Institute of Ecology, Xalapa, in Mexico.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
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Eiman Karar
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Senior Governance and institutional reform practitioner with long experience in instating decentralisation of decision making. Working in development context around issues of equity in access to natural resources, information and legal recourse. Main experience in the public sector sphere offering policy design supported with citizen agentisation in democratic governance. Her core expertise lies in fresh water governance; mobilisation of broad stakeholder base, advocacy using science as a medium for sustainable management of natural resources as a system; considering different boundary conditions; catchments, livelihoods and infrastructure benefication boundaries. Good water management indicators at local, national, regional and transboundary levels.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
More information to come
Regina M. Buono
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Regina is a nonresident scholar at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. She previously served as the Baker Botts Fellow in Energy and Environmental Regulatory Affairs at CES. Prior to that, she was practiced law in Austin, Texas, focusing her practice in the areas of water, administrative, and endangered species law. She has also worked in various roles with the Texas legislature and as a consultant to oil and gas companies, designing a habitat credit exchange to achieve compliance with the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Her research interests include water governance, water and energy, and payment for ecosystem services.
Regina received a B.A. in international relations, political science and Spanish from the University of Arkansas, a J.D. from The University of Texas School of Law and a M.Sc. in water science and governance from King’s College London. She is currently a doctoral student in public policy at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin, where her focus is water policy.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
More information to come
John Matthews
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Dr John Matthews is a SIWI Associate and the coordinator of the technical working group of the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation. With co-chairs at SIWI and the World Bank, AGWA contains 40+ multilaterals, governments (UN, national, agencies, state, RBO, city), NGOs and companies. He has been the lead consultant and developer of the Climate Bonds Standards for Water Investments, nominated reviewer for the IPCC Technical Guidelines on including water in national adaptation plans and advisor to major development banks, governments and global NGO’s on water and climate adaptation issues. He will contribute to SIWI’s input on Work Packages 7 (business models) and 8 (policy mainstreaming).
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
More information to come
Nora Van Cauwenbergh
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Dr. Van Cauwenbergh has over 8 years of academic and practical experience in participatory river basin planning and governance. She completed her PhD in participatory decision support for natural resources management at Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. She continues to perform system analysis and to investigate governance structures, stakeholder processes and the relevance, accuracy and use of stakeholders’ knowledge as compared to knowledge provided by modeling in decision support. After her post-doc, she is active in the introduction of innovative measures in river basin planning (mainly non-conventional resources and eco-hydrological measures) in countries in the MENA region, India and South-East Asia (Myanmar and Bangladesh). Her research focus is on the grounding of system analysis and decision support systems by introducing stakeholders knowledge and stakeholders motivation in the decision process itself. At UNESCO-IHE, Nora is Senior Lecturer and coordinator of Water Resources Planning and lectures various topics related to water resources planning and supervises MSc research in water management and water governance.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
More information to come
Adam Loch
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Dr Adam Loch is a Senior Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow at the University of Adelaide. Prior to moving to South Australia Adam spent 10 years as a cotton grower and advocate for irrigators in Queensland and currently researches topics such as irrigator decision-making, water markets and institutional reform, transaction costs, and reallocation policy/program effectiveness. His current work focuses on the public and private transaction costs associated with water reform and its outcomes.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
The ability to collaborate with cutting-edge researchers on cutting-edge problems is of very real benefit and interest. Where global organisations are helping to set that agenda there is also great potential for meaningful outputs with lasting impact.
Corentin Girard
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Corentin Girard has a PhD in Water Resources Engineering at the Technical University of Valencia in Spain, and also in Economics at the Montpellier Doctoral School of Economics in France. His research deals with the adaptation of river basin to global change, developing an interdisciplinary framework to integrate top-down and bottom-up approaches to support the selection of adaptation measures at the local level. He is currently collaborating in a national research project in Spain, IMPADAPT, that deals with global change adaptation in water resources systems.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
Being part of a working group in Water Future is a perfect opportunity to improve my understanding of how water challenges are addressed from different perspectives by the international research community.
Nina Graveline
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Nina holds a PhD in Economics from AgroParisTech and an master/engineering degree in life sciences. She visited (scholar stay) the University of California (Davis) in 2011. Her work concentrates largely on the challenges linking agriculture, water and the environment. Her main research interests are water policy and agriculture’s adaptation to global changes working with the development of hydro-economic modelling approaches or empirical approaches. She’s also working on the concept and understanding of economic resilience in natural hazard contexts, geothermal policies as well as methods to consider uncertainty and risk in water plans (robust decision making).
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
Water Future is a great opportunity to exchange and work with scholars and professionals invested in the economics of water resources in different parts of the world, bringing together different perspectives linked to the diversity of water-institutional environments.
Dolores Rey
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Dolores Rey has more than 7 years of research experience on water availability risks and water economics in the agricultural sector. Her current research under the UK Drought and Water Scarcity Programme seeks to understand farmer decision-making processes regarding water management during drought events and the financial impacts of droughts on UK agriculture. Before Cranfield, and as part of her PhD at the Technical University of Madrid, Dolores was involved in pan European research dealing with water markets to cope with water shortages; drought and flood policies related to the agricultural sector in different countries; and climate change impacts on agriculture.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
A sustainable use of water is one of the main challenges humanity is facing. Through Water Futures, leading reasearchers and organizations from all over the world have the opportunity to work together towards a more sustainable water world.
David Adamson
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
David has been working on the economics of water resources since 2004 when he was employed by Professor John Quiggin to build a state-contingent analysis model of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin.
This model has been utilised to: write papers exploring the consequences of how to model climate shocks, either via a mean reduction in supply versus increased variability (more droughts); commissioned to provide input into The Garnaut Climate Change Review; and during the development of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan it was used to explore the welfare (economic, social and environmental) changes from alternative levels of sustainable extractions.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
To create meaningful policy outcomes to tackle water insecurity, a multidisciplinary approach is needed. This collaboration provides the opportunity to communicate the inherent uncertainty behind scientific and economic predictions to create a real difference in policy.
Alvar Escriva-Bou
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Alvar Escriva-Bou is a research fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center. His research explores integrated water, energy, and environmental resources management, including systems approaches, simulation and optimization of economic-engineering models, and climate change analysis. Previously, he worked as a civil engineer, managing and developing large infrastructure projects for local and regional governments and consulting firms in Spain. He holds a PhD and MS in water and environmental engineering and a BS in civil engineering from the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain, as well as an MS in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Davis.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
Water future gives me the opportunity to learn from colleagues all around the globe about similar water problems that face different legal, institutional, socioeconomic, and technological constraints. By understanding their reality and their constraints, I also can improve my ability to look for creative and feasible solutions for the problems that I have to deal with.
Diana Cordoba
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Diana Cordoba is a transdisciplinary researcher investigating environmental governance and land use change of bioenergy developments and Payment for Environmental Services (PES) programs in Latin America. In her research, she seeks to advance theoretical and empirical understandings of the interplay between:
- political economic processes,
- the creation, use, and governance of new technologies and knowledges, and
- local social and ecological processes and outcomes in the water-food-energy nexus.
Through her professional experience, Diana has lived in 5 countries and has engaged in a number of research and development networks in collaborative projects in 10 countries in the Americas.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
Water future is a great opportunity to take advantage of an international network of scientists working at different scales to help shape the research agenda for improving water data to make informed decisions for sustainability, and to manage increasing water-related threats.
Angelo Nolè
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Angelo’s area of expertise is in Crop System, Forestry and Environmental Science. His research activities focus on functional modelling of forest ecosystem productivity and carbon uptake; functional responses of forest ecosystems to environmental variables, under actual and future climate scenarios, and forest ecosystem vulnerability and land degradation through analysis of soil degradation and desertification processes. He currently maintains research projects related to Land and Ecosystem Degradation and Desertification: Assessing the Fit of Responses (EU Project LEDDRA), Crop system and forest management for climate change mitigation strategies (MIUR-PRIN CARBOTREES), and Accounting methodologies for CO2 uptake by Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems (MIUR-FISR Carbo-Italy).
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
Water availability and management represent key issues for socio-ecological systems in the Mediterranean region under climate change. The WATER FUTURE interdisciplinary approach can provide reliable strategies for the implementation of innovative approaches for ecosystem management in order to support main ecosystem services
Kai Schwärzel
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
The overall goal of Kai Schwärzel’s work is to understand, quantify, and predict processes that control water and matter fluxes in variable saturated soils ranging from the plot to catchment scale. He is using lab and field experiments, as well as numerical modelling to deal with these problems. The work of Dr Schwärzel combines aspects of soil physics/hydrology and soil-plant-atmosphere interactions.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
Water Future shall help to translate good science into policies that ensure a more sustainable use of environmentally resources.
Theresa Selfa
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Theresa Selfa is a social scientist who focuses on the governance and social dimensions of agriculture and natural resources issues, in the USA and Latin America. She is particularly interested in water and energy policies and impacts at the household and community levels.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
It will enable me to learn which policies and programs best facilitate access to clean water for people of all income levels, and that those who are providing water services also share benefits for their provision.
Yanhui Wang
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Over the past 30 years, Prof. Dr. Yanhui Wang has conducted the studies of forest-water interaction across various scales under different climates, from humid subtropical south China to dryland regions of north China, but mostly in the dry Loess Plateau of northwest China. He also studies on the integrated forest-water management. His research contributes to a quantitative assessment of impact on water yield by forest structure in stand scale and forest cover in watershed scale, and the water-based forest management in dryland regions. He has published over 230 articles and 18 books.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
Water future is important, because I study the interrelations between forests and water in the dryland regions. Both the forest quantity (forest coverage), spatial distribution, and quality (forest management) in watersheds will influence the water resources and therefore the sustainable development in dryland regions. On the other hand, the available amount of water resources will limit the forestry development, and require new techniques for a water supply security oriented forest management and watershed management.
Alex Mayer
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Dr. Alex Mayer is the Charles and Patricia Nelson Presidential Professor of Environmental Engineering and founding Director of the Center for Water & Society at Michigan Technological University, where he has been since 1991. Dr. Mayer’s teaching and research focuses on water resources sustainability, watershed processes, modelling and modelling; and groundwater flow, transport, and remediation. His research takes place in the Laurentian Great Lakes, the Rio Grande, northwest and central Mexico, among other locations in the world. Dr. Mayer has directed more than $11 million in externally-funded research and has published 100 papers and book chapters in peer-reviewed literature.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
Water Future offers the opportunity to research, implement, and test integrated, polices for sustainable and resilient water resources management.
Ted I.E. Veldkamp
Member of the Groundwater Management Working Group and Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Ted Veldkamp is an inter-disciplinary researcher at the Water and Climate Risk department of the VU University in Amsterdam. Her research focus is on the modelling and assessment of fresh water resources and their extremes, including flooding, droughts, and water scarcity events. She has evaluated past and future trends in extreme events, their underlying driving anthropogenic and hydro-climatic forces, and their impacts on society. Using risk assessment methods and economic evaluation techniques, Ted Veldkamp works on the evaluation and optimization of adaptation portfolios in order to optimize water resource use in space and time, and alleviate the adverse effects of extreme hydrologic events.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
It offers an unique opportunity to work with a group of international researchers with various backgrounds on emerging water related problems.
C. Dionisio Pérez-Blanco
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Dionisio is an AXA Postdoctoral Fellow at Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC) and research associate at Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM). Over the past eight years he has been working on topics related to water and agricultural economics in the context of national and EU research projects at FEEM, CMCC, Alcalá University (UAH), IMDEA Water, Salamanca University and Spanish Research Council. He has also worked as a lecturer at UAH and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and has been a visiting fellow at Middlesex University, University of Queensland and UAH.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
Through its call for working groups, Water Future has been instrumental to actively liaise with excellent researchers working on water management and institutional reform worldwide.
Elena Lopez-Gunn
Member of the Economic Instruments of Water Security Working Group
Elena Lopez-Gunn is Founder and Director of ICATALIST, a small innovation SME located in Spain. She is also a Cheney Fellow at the University of Leeds, UK and a collaborator with the Water Observatory, Botín Foundation. She was an Associate Professor at IE Business school and a Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics where she worked as an Alcoa Research Fellow. Dr Elena Lopez-Gunn finished her PhD at King’s College. She also has a Masters from the University of Cambridge. Professionally, Elena has collaborated with a number of organizations including UNESCO, FAO, UNDP, EU DG Research and Innovation, the England and Wales Environment Agency, as well as the private sector like Repsol, public institutions and NGOs like for Transparency International-Spanish Chapter. She has published on a range of issues mainly related with innovation, water governance, climate change adaptation, partnership models, public policy and knowledge management.
Water Future Is Important To Me Because…
Water Future matters because water is life. It is important to value all the amazing services nature provides for us to be used wisely to secure our future.