The Water Observatory Team

Professor Alberto Garrido is Director of the Water Observatory. He is currently Vice-Rector for Quality and Efficiency at the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He is an advisory member of the Rosenberg Forum on Water Policy. He has worked as a consultant for the OECD, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, FAO, IFPRI, the European Parliament and the European Commission, and a number of regional governments (eg Navarra and Aragón), public administrations (MAGRAMA, ENESA) and private companies (PepsiCO, TRAGSA, BASF). He was Director of the Centre for Studies and Research for the Management of Agricultural and Environmental Risks (CEIGRAM, a mixed R&D centre of the UPM). He has carried out studies and works in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, France, Nicaragua, the Netherlands, Panama and Vietnam.

His research area focuses on the economic analysis of resource management in sustainability studies, with special attention to the water footprint and virtual water trade. de He was a visiting professor at the University of California Berkeley, and a researcher at the University of South Australia. He is a Doctor of Agricultural Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He also has a Master’s degree in Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics from the University of California, Davis.

He has supervised 16 doctoral theses and published 18 monographs and 80 scientific articles.

Dr. Lucia De Stefano is Deputy Director of the Botin Foundation’s Water Observatory and Associate Professor at the Geological Faculty of the Complutense University of Madrid.

She has worked as an international consultant on projects for USAID, the World Bank, the University of Oxford, Oregon State University, and WWF International. Since 2010 he has carried out various research projects on water policy in Spain and Latin America within the framework of the Botin Foundation’s Water Observatory. She has been a postdoctoral researcher at Oregon State University (USA), working on water conflicts and climate variability and the evaluation of water governance in North Africa and the Middle East.

Previously, she worked as an expert in water policy for WWF International and WWF Spain and as a specialist in water and land management in the private sector.

De Stefano has a degree in Geological Sciences from the Universitá degli Studi di Pavia (Italy) and a PhD from the Complutense University of Madrid. He received postgraduate training from the Programme in Water Conflict Management and Transformation (USA), UNESCO-IHE (Holland), the Complutense University of Madrid, the Polytechnic University of Madrid, and the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (Holland ). She has been a visiting professor at Oregon State University and the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Her main areas of work and research are hydrological planning and water resources management with special emphasis on the interactions between scales and management areas, the evaluation of environmental public policies, drought management, the analysis of resilience to climate variability, and the evaluation of attributes of good water governance. De Stefano has participated in 14 competitive research projects funded by Spanish (2) or foreign / international (12) public bodies. Since 2008 she has been the author or co-author of 39 articles in indexed journals and 20 book chapters or technical reports for international and Spanish organizations. She has also been co-editor of four books and three special volumes in indexed international scientific journals.

Luis Martínez Cortina holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from Universidad de Cantabria (Spain) and is a civil servant of the Spanish corps of scientists of public research institutes. Currently he is Deputy Director General of the Subdirección General de Planificación Hidrológica in the Water General Directorate of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge. He has been scientific advisor to the Groundwater Project of the Botín Foundation and Senior Researcher at the Spanish Geological and Mining Institute (Spanish Geological Survey). Author or co-author of 4 books and monographs and about 50 scientific articles. Regular lecturer in Master’s courses related to hydrology and water resources management.

Barbara Willaarts is an expert in water resources management and stakeholder engagement with over 16 years of professional. She has developed most of her professional career in research organizations and policy think tanks, investigating the complex interlinkages between water, food, and the environment. She has ample international experience developing and implementing research and research for action projects across a diversity of geographical realms, including Europe, Latin America, Subsaharian Africa, and South Asia. In addition to her research activity, she also works as a consultant for different international organizations and regional governments. She is affiliated with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria as a research scholar and project manager. In addition, she is also working for ICATALYST in Spain as a senior researcher supporting the development and implementation of European research projects.

Gabriel Arbonès Domingo is a PhD student of the “Observatorio del Agua”
in the PhD Programme “Tecnología Agroambiental para una Agricultura
Sostenible” at the “Universidad Politécnica de Madrid”. He holds a
double degree in Business Administration and Management and Finance and
Accounting from the “Universitat Rovira i Virgili” and a Master in
Bioeconomy from the “Universität Hohenheim” (Stuttgart, Germany). His
research activity focuses on the calculation of the Water Footprint of
Spanish agriculture and the quality of water bodies in Spain. Previously
Gabriel has worked at the environmental consultancy Forliance, where he
was financial manager of agroforestry projects in Latin America. He has
also worked as a researcher at the “Universität Hohenheim” and the
“Universidad Politécnica de Madrid”, the latter on a FAO project to
measure the sustainability of cocoa cultivation in Ecuador.

Gonzalo Delacámara is the Director of the IE Center of Water & Climate Adaptation, Senior Vice President of Water Europe, and an elected member of the Board of Directors of the International Desalination Association (IDA). He is also a member of the External Scientific Advisory Council (ESAC) of KWR, a renowned water cycle research center in the Netherlands. Until 2021, he was also co-founder and Academic Director of the Water Economics Forum, a public debate initiative with Nobel Laureates in Economics and Peace. He has recently been appointed by the European Commission as a member of the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance. Gonzalo Delacámara has been a professor at the University of Alcalá (Spain) during over 15 years; he is also a mentor in international support programs for women researchers in Germany (Association of Leibniz Institutes) or the United States (Techwomen).

Gonzalo is a senior economist (more than 25 years of experience) working all over the world (in more than 80 countries: European Union, USA, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East, other countries in Africa, Central and South Asia, Australia…) in multilateral organizations such as the European Commission and agencies and programs like the UN, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). He is specialized in the economic management of natural resources: water, climate, energy, air pollution, oceans, biodiversity and ecosystem services, etc., with an emphasis on their complex links to economic and social development.

He is the author of numerous books, scientific publications, and articles, as well as a keynote speaker at global events.

Delia Andries is a PhD candidate of the Water Observatory of the Botín Foundation in the PhD program in Geology and Geological Engineering at the Complutense University of Madrid. Her research is focused on the quality of water intended for human consumption, the public policies associated with them, and the pressure agriculture and livestock put on water. She has a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the Complutense University of Madrid and two master’s degrees; one in Natural Protected Areas from the Autonomous University of Madrid and one in Geoinformatics applied to the Management of Natural Resources from the Technical Superior School of Agricultural and Forestry Engineering of the University of León. Delia has participated in various international cooperation projects aimed at studying and improving the quality and governance of water in Salvadoran rural communities. Her first Master Thesis focused on the relationship between the civil war and the sustainable exploitation of natural resources in the Salvadoran coastal plains. Her second Master Thesis studied the use of remote sensing techniques to assess the regeneration of pinewoods in the Mediterranean region. She has also worked for the Institute of Agricultural Sciences developing new methods based on Geographic Informatic Systems for the delineation of Nitrate Vulnerable Zones in the Ebro and Segura river basins.