Rodrigo Vidaurre

Rodrigo Vidaurre is a Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, specialising in water policy, water governance, river basin management, water pollution (including emerging pollutants), climate change adaptation, and implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). He has a wide international experience, having worked on the river basin management of several EU countries, as well as in numerous countries in South America and Africa. Rodrigo Vidaurre is a native speaker of English and Spanish and also works in German.

One side of Rodrigo’s work relates to European and German research projects on water governance. In the currently ongoing project STEER, he contributes to identifying approaches to increase good governance in relation to complex water resource problems. Previous water governance projects focused on drought management (DROP) and adaptive approaches to water management (NeWater).

Rodrigo has also worked extensively on both research and applied projects on the topic of pharmaceutical pollution. Research projects include PHARMAS, focusing on reducing environmental pollution caused by pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical residues, and KNAPPE, evaluating policy options for the reduction of pharmaceutical pollution. For the German Environment Agency he has worked on projects identifying options to reduce pollution due to veterinary medicines, on how to take better account of environmental risks in the authorisation of veterinary medicines, and on communication strategies for behavioural change of stakeholders involved in veterinary pollution. He has also moderated a number of workshops on policy aspects of veterinary authorisation, for instance on the proposed monography system and on antibiotic resistance.

For the Directorate-General for Environment of the European Commission under the coordination of the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), Rodrigo is working on improving synergies between the Nature Directives, the Water Framework Directive, the Nitrates Directive, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, and the Floods Directive. He is leading a project for the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Environment and Agriculture which analyses the impact of drinking water protection agreements on pollutant levels in groundwater.

For the Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development Rodrigo has worked on financing mechanisms for water management in South America (EcoCuencas) and on Performance Indicators for transboundary river basins in Africa (KPI). Further international experience includes his work in Ethiopia on the link between water, climate change impacts, and human security (CLICO).