Groundwater – Base Rock of Resilience

Dr. Moshood N. Tijani is the Groundwater Desk Officer at the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW), Abuja, Nigeria, charged with driving the agenda for sustainable utilization and management of groundwater resources in the African continent. He holds a doctorate degree in Hydrogeology and Hydrochemistry from the University of Münster, Germany, as well as a Postgraduate Certificate in Hydrogeology from the University of Tübingen, Germany.

Previously, Moshood was a Professor of Hydrogeology and Environmental Geology at the Department of Geology, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, with 20 years of teaching and research experience, and over 70 scientific publications. He is a member of the national and international professional hydrogeological associations.

Dr. Paul Orengoh is the Program Director at the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW), where he plays a critical role in setting and executing Africa’s water and sanitation sector agenda. He acts as the primary technical figurehead within the African Union framework, which recognizes AMCOW as a specialized institution on water and sanitation.

Paul holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences from the University of East London, United Kingdom. He has over 15 years of experience in developing, managing and implementing complex projects and programs on water resources and ecosystem management, watershed planning and management, climate change and adaptation across countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Dr. Callist Tindimugaya is Head of the Water Resources Planning and Regulation Department of the Ministry of Water and Environment, Uganda. His key role is to ensure that the groundwater resources of Uganda are developed and managed in an integrated and sustainable manner.

Callist was previously Regional Vice President for the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) in charge of sub-Saharan Africa. In this role, he was responsible for promoting groundwater resources development and management in sub-Saharan Africa.

He is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Africa Groundwater Network (AGW-Net). Callist has also represented Uganda in various regional and international partnerships, such as the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) and Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

Dr. Alice Aureli is a Water Resources expert with a PhD in Hydrogeology. She has over 30 years of experience in groundwater resources management and governance. In addition to her many years of research and teaching, she is the Chief of UNESCO’s Groundwater Systems and Water for Human Settlements section. As a member of the Secretariat of UNESCO-IHP, Alice is responsible for, among others, the Internationally Shared Aquifer Resources Management (ISARM) initiative. This role has led her to supervise the work of UNESCO’s expert team that supported the United Nations International Law Commission in preparing the Draft Articles on the Law of Transboundary Aquifers. An important aspect of her work has been on scientific and policy-related issues surrounding groundwater governance. Recipient of several international awards, Alice continues to lecture regularly on a variety of postgraduate courses, and coordinates master’s degree studies and PhD courses in the field of transboundary waters, hydrogeology and groundwater resources management. She is the author of a large number of publications and served as editor of various international journals.

Dr. Karen G. Villholth is Principal Researcher at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), where she leads the groundwater portfolio. Karen coordinates the Groundwater Solutions Initiative for Policy and Practice (GRIPP), a partnership of 30 international organizations supporting the management of groundwater for sustainable development. She has worked at the Southern Africa office of IWMI in Pretoria, South Africa, since 2012. She holds a number of significant roles in professional international associations around groundwater.

Karen holds a PhD and MSc from the Technical University of Denmark and an MSc from the University of Washington, USA. She has previously worked for DHI-Water and Environment, and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. Karen is the editor/author of five books, and has contributed to the publication of more than 70 peer-reviewed journal papers and special issues.

James Sauramba has been the Executive Director of the Southern African Development Community – Groundwater Management Institute (SADC-GMI) since its launch in 2016. He is responsible for providing the vision and creating effective strategic partnerships with the SADC Secretariat and the 16 SADC Member States, thereby building the unique Centre of Excellence for groundwater management in the SADC region.

James holds a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from University of Zimbabwe and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in General Management from the University of the Free State, South Africa. He has 30 years of work experience, the bulk of which has been in the SADC region’s water sector in various senior management roles.

Prof. Seifu Kebede Gurmessa, formerly from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, has been based in the School of Agricultural, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Centre for Water Resources Research, University of KwaZulu-Natal since September 2019.

Seifu has authored more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles in various hydrology topics and a book on groundwater. His research interests are in tracer hydrology and geochemistry as applied to water resources management, surface water-groundwater interaction studies, and open water evaporation studies. Seifu has been involved in research activities related to the multifaceted dimensions of groundwater, including rural water supply, groundwater irrigation, and human health. He is member of the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) and co-chair of its Groundwater Quality Commission.

Dr. David K. Kreamer is a Professor of Geoscience, and past director of the interdisciplinary Water Resources Management graduate program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA. He serves as Vice President – Science and Programme, International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH).

David has previously been the Division Director of the National Ground Water Association (NGWA), and President of the Universities Council on Water Resources (UCOWR). His research includes work on water and international security, maintaining good water quality supply for people and ecosystems, particularly in economically developing regions, and combating environmental contamination. David has authored over 65 professional publications and has been an invited speaker in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, Pacific Island nations, South America, Africa and the Middle East.

Dr. Karen G. Villholth is Principal Researcher at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), where she leads the groundwater portfolio. Karen coordinates the Groundwater Solutions Initiative for Policy and Practice (GRIPP), a partnership of 30 international organizations supporting the management of groundwater for sustainable development. She has worked at the Southern Africa office of IWMI in Pretoria, South Africa, since 2012. She holds a number of significant roles in professional international associations around groundwater.

Karen holds a PhD and MSc from the Technical University of Denmark and an MSc from the University of Washington, USA. She has previously worked for DHI-Water and Environment, and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. Karen is the editor/author of five books, and has contributed to the publication of more than 70 peer-reviewed journal papers and special issues.

Dr. Neno Kukurić is a groundwater specialist with over 30 years of global experience as a field hydrogeologist, consultant, scientific researcher and manager. His professional interests include international water cooperation and a multidisciplinary approach to water-related issues. Since 2011, he serves as a director of International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC).

Prof. Yoshihide Wada is Acting Director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) Water (WAT) program. He has a joint appointment as Professor of Global Water and Food Security at the Department of Physical Geography, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He is also an adjunct research scientist at the Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, USA, and an adjunct professor at the School of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, China.

Dr. Tom Gleeson is an Associate Professor and President’s Chair of Global Water Sustainability in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Victoria, Canada. He is interested in groundwater sustainability, regional- to continental-scale groundwater systems, and groundwater-surface water interactions.

Tom received the 2015 Advancing Earth and Space Science (AGU) Early Career Hydrologic Award, founded ‘Water Underground’ – a groundwater blog by a global collective of hydrogeologic researchers for water resource professionals, academics and anyone interested in groundwater, and co-initiated the Global Groundwater Sustainability Statement.

Dr. David Hyndman is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Michigan State University, USA. He received his Bachelor of Science in Hydrology from the University of Arizona, USA, and Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Hydrogeology from Stanford University, USA.
David’s research interests include quantifying the effects of human activities on the water cycle, characterizing the aquifers that store and transmit water supplies critical to human and ecological health, coupling novel models with field data to explore the Earth system processes, and developing and applying Earth system models that simulate hydrologic fluxes across large regions.

Dr. Jay Famiglietti is a hydrologist, a professor and the Executive Director of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, where he is the Canada 150 Research Chair in Hydrology and Remote Sensing. Prior to moving to Saskatchewan, he served as the Senior Water Scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology.

From 2013 to 2018, Jay was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the California State Water Boards. Jay and his team have been researching and communicating about water and climate change – in academics, in business, in government and to the general public – for over 30 years.

Dr. António Chambel has a PhD in Hydrogeology from the University of Évora, Portugal, where he has been a teacher since 1985. He taught at universities in the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy and Mozambique. António is a specialist in hard rock hydrogeology and has been working on groundwater in Portugal, Angola and Mozambique. He has contributed to more than 100 publications related to these topics.

António is the current President of the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH). He represented IAH in many international institutions and meetings, including the World Water Council (WWC), UN-Water, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (UNESCO-IHP) and the International Network of Basin Organizations (INBO).

Prof. Wolfgang Kinzelbach was professor for Hydromechanics and Groundwater at ETH Zürich, Switzerland, from 1996 to 2014. Since his retirement, he is heading the Rehabilitation and Management Strategy for Over-pumped Aquifers under a Changing Climate project, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), with case studies in Handan (Hebei) and Zhangye (Gansu) in China.

Wolfgang’s research focused on flow and transport processes in the environment. His current main interest is sustainable water resources management in arid and semi-arid regions, mainly in Africa and China. He received several academic awards, and has published five books and contributed to more than 190 International Scientific Indexing (ISI) journal articles.

Dr. Ania Grobicki is the Deputy Director for Adaptation at the Green Climate Fund. She is a chemical engineer with a PhD from Imperial College London. Ania worked for Shell South Africa and in academia and consulting prior to becoming the coordinator of the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF).

Subsequently, Anja headed the Global Water Partnership (GWP) for six years, and then served as the Deputy Secretary General and Acting Secretary General of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. For the last 10 years, Ania focused on the links between water and climate, including water-related disasters. She joined Green Climate Fund (GCF) in 2019.

Deepa Maggo is Manager, Water, at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). She works closely with business members and partners of WBCSD in India to coordinate business-led collaborative efforts on water security and water management. She has been working on key topics such as water stewardship, water-smart agriculture and circular water management, where the private sector has played an important role in advancing knowledge and solutions in India. Deepa has previously worked with ACC Limited, a Lafarge-Holcim group cement company, on Sustainability Planning and Communications. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Microbiology and a Master’s degree in Natural Resource Management.

Dr. Tales Carvalho Resende has more than 7 years of experience in the development and management of international cooperation projects on environmental issues, climate change and transboundary waters. He worked at the UNESCO Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (IHP) where he coordinated research and capacity-building activities on groundwater and climate change and water diplomacy that lead to the establishment of the first arrangements for the governance of a transboundary aquifer in Southern Africa (Stampriet Aquifer) and Central America (Ocotepeque-Citala Aquifer). He is Brazilian, PhD, Earth Scientist and holds an MA in International Affairs and LLM in Climate Change Law and Policy.

Meng Wang is the President of the Young Earth Scientists (YES) Network and a Senior Geologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He started his career in 2008 at the Ministry of Land and Resources, and worked for the China Geological Survey on research on geological projects, as well as policy counseling and management. In 2011, Meng transferred to China Minmetals Group for seven years of research, and led several projects on iron ore, gold, rare earth and copper in different countries. Currently, Meng is leading a project on High Quality Development of Underground Spaces around Yangzi Economic Belt as the World Cities Circle.

Dr. Alice Aureli is a Water Resources expert with a PhD in Hydrogeology. She has over 30 years of experience in groundwater resources management and governance. In addition to her many years of research and teaching, she is the Chief of UNESCO’s Groundwater Systems and Water for Human Settlements section. As a member of the Secretariat of UNESCO-IHP, Alice is responsible for, among others, the Internationally Shared Aquifer Resources Management (ISARM) initiative. This role has led her to supervise the work of UNESCO’s expert team that supported the United Nations International Law Commission in preparing the Draft Articles on the Law of Transboundary Aquifers. An important aspect of her work has been on scientific and policy-related issues surrounding groundwater governance. Recipient of several international awards, Alice continues to lecture regularly on a variety of postgraduate courses, and coordinates master’s degree studies and PhD courses in the field of transboundary waters, hydrogeology and groundwater resources management. She is the author of a large number of publications and served as editor of various international journals.

Dr. Eric Tardieu is the Executive Director of the International Office for Water and the Secretary General of the International Network of Basin Organizations (INBO). After graduating from Ecole Polytechnique, a prestigious, postgraduate, multidisciplinary, engineering French school, he achieved a PhD in urban wastewater treatment, which included research work in Beijing, China. He served as a water policy officer in France, applying and managing national and European regulations. Eric then held successive responsible positions in the public sector for national, regional (Normandy) and local (Toulouse) authorities, working with elected or appointed decision-makers, implementing policy regulations, designing multi-stakeholder strategies and measure plans. He has been engaged not only in the field of water resources management and environmental protection, but also for local economic development, innovation and research, public-private partnerships and European and international cooperation.

Mr. Bertram Swartz is the Deputy Director of Geohydrology at Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry where he holds a pivotal role in the management of groundwater resources, providing advice on utilization and governance of this very important resource in Namibia. He has over a decade of experience in groundwater and its management. He serves as the President of the Namibian Hydrogeological Association (NHA) and as council member on the Geoscience Council of Namibia. Bertram holds a Post-Graduate degree in Applied Geology (Hydrogeology), an Undergraduate degree in Environmental and Geographical Science, and a management degree.