Since 2014, each year the Botín Foundation’s Water Observatory has been awarding prizes to innovative ideas and projects in water management developed by professionals and researchers in the world of water.
2024 Edition. The award for Cateogry A (“M.R. Llamas Young Talent”) was given ex aequo to Oriol Carbó Monmany and Jaume Teixidó Zabay for their project ‘Programox’ and Juan Felipe Torres, for his advances in thermodiffusive desalination. In Category B (education or dissemination project about water), the award went ex aequo to the Alianza por el Agua de Ibiza y Formentera and Ana Paula Mejorada Torres, for their ‘El agua en la Escuela’ and ‘Escuelas de lluvia’ projects, respectively. Finally, the Category C prize (given to water user collectives) was awarded to the Sociedad Civil Particular Urbanización Valle R. Los Monasterios. More information
2023 Edition. The Category A prize of the ninth edition was awarded to the collective candidacy of Manuel del Jesus Peñil, Salvador Navas Fernández and Dina V. Gómez Rave (IHCantabria) for their Methodological guide for the estimation of minimum contributions to reservoirs in the context of climate change. In Category B, the citizen science project ‘FuenAragón’, developed by the Centro de Investigación y Tecnología Agroalimentaria de Aragón (CITA), the Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología from the CSIC and the IBERCIVIS Foundation, was awarded. And in Category C, awards were given ex aequo to Alba Ballester for the ‘Ebro Resilience Strategy’ and to the Fundación Ecológica El Porvenir (Colombia) for the initiative ‘The Tequendama Falls have a future’. More information
2022 Edition. The award for Category A of the eighth edition was given to the Corporativo de Servicios Ambientales de Sustentabilidad de CPlantae SRL de CV (México), for the project CPlantae: young entrepreneurship with worms to provide sanitation in Mexico. In Category B, Medio Ambiente, Agua, Residuos y Energía de Cantabria – MARE (Spain) was awarded ex aequo for its project The water drop’s voyage. School awareness program as well as the candidacy of the organizations Fundación Manzana Verde, Bestias del Sur Salvaje, Fundación Nahuelbuta, Arauko Indómito and PRELA Bíobio (Chile), for their project ‘Kümelko: learning from water’. And in Category C, the candidacy of Aaron Wolf (United States) was awarded as a mentor for young talent in the water management field. More information.
2021 Edition. In this edition, the Category A prizes were awarded ex-aequo to Raquel García Pacheco and Borja Garrido Arias, for the application of advanced techniques for the sustainable recovery of reverse osmosis membranes (‘Ecomemb’) and for the reuse of washing effluents in the food industry, respectively. In Category B, the collective candidacy of Patricia Carbonell Rodríguez, Momeb Bakry and Marta Castillo was awarded for the video ‘The Fresh Water Short Film’ on the water footprint of Categoryrn society. And in Category C, two ex-aequo awards were given to Sarai Díaz García for the scientific dissemination project ‘#50lwaterchallenge – Climate Change, Here and Now’, and to a collective educational project by EMALCSA (Empresa Municipal de Aguas de La Coruña S.A.) and Asociación Desenvolvemento Rural Mariñas – Betanzos called ‘A auga non para’.
2019 Edition. The winners of this edition were Ricardo Martínez Vives, engineer at Useful Wastes, for the development of a technology for the valorization of brine produced in the desalination process; NGO TADEH for its ‘Mobile Water School’, which seeks to train the local population to facilitate access to water and sanitation in vulnerable communities. In addition, two ex-aequo awards were given to the Eladia Marino Plurilingual School from Cabanas (A Coruña) and the water supply company EMASESA for their educational projects entitled Drinking Water, a Universal Right. Rejecting Plastic as a Social Duty and Environmental Education as a strength for sustainable water management, respectively. More information.
2018 Edition. The Botín Foundation awarded Hèctor Monclús Sales for his ‘DrinkIA’ project to support decision-making in water purification treatments; Dustin Garrick Sonia Hoque, Jane Zhao, Paul Ekwar, Jacob Katuva and Ciff Nyaga for their ‘Water tracking app’ to track water supplied by informal water vendors in developing countries; and Andrés Díez Herrero for his training program in the children’s colony ‘Venero Claro’. More information.
2017 Edition. The young award winners were Marta Vivar García for her project Solar hybrid system for water disinfection and electricity production; Alberto Duaigües for his project ‘eFoodPrint ENV’; and Chengzi Chew, for his project ‘Aqua Republica’. More information.
2016 Edition. In this edition, awards were given to Yulie Edith Meneses González, for the project Water optimization for food processing; Jaume Padilla Just, for the creation of the ‘Greencustomers’ project; and Pratap Thapa for his project The Barsha Pump: improving income with hydro-powered irrigation.
2015 Edition. The winners were Xavier Bellmunt Mancebo, for his project Design of a portable drinking water supply system using Direct Osmosis and management in situations of water deficit; Alejandro Maceira Rozados, for having created the digital media iAgua; and Diego Felipe Arévalo Uribe, for the Evaluation of the water footprint in Colombian watersheds within the framework of ENA2014.
2014 Edition. In this edition the award winners were Sebastiá Puig Broch, for his project Sustainable Bioremediation of contaminated groundwater with bioelectrochemical systems; David Martínez Granados, for The role of desalination in addressing the problem of over-exploitation of aquifers in southeastern Spain; and David Marcos Alonso, for Water saving campaign in Spanish households.