Tom Ash

Tom Ash has 29 years of experience in the fields of water use efficiency, public education and horticulture. Tom was instrumental in the design and implementation of the 1st water budget tiered rate structure in 1991. That rate design was described as “the model” for conservation rates in the US by the EPA (1996). That rate structure resulted in a reduction of landscape water use by 61%, stabilized agency revenues, grew customer satisfaction to over 90%, and improved local water quality at the same time. He is a Senior Environmental Resources Planner at the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, where he is educating and assisting a dozen water agencies on the design and implementation of “sustainable” water rate structures.

Ken Barenklau

Ken Baerenklau is an Associate Professor of Environmental Economics & Policy in the School of Public Policy and the Associate Provost at UC Riverside. He is also an Adjunct Fellow in the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California. Dr. Baerenklau has fourteen years of professional experience working on a variety of policy issues related to water resource management. He holds Bachelors and Master’s degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Bernard Barraqué

Bernard O. Barraqué, civil engineer (Mines school, Fr), master in city planning (Harvard University), and PhD in urban socio-economic issues (Paris University). Presently CNRS research director (emeritus), in the Centre International de Recherches sur l’Environnement et le Développement, attached to Paris-Tech. He specialised on water resources allocation and WSS management in Europe, and co-ordinated an important project on the sustainability of water services in French cities, with an opening on Europe, the US and Australia. http://eau3e.hypotheses.org. Member of the IWA specialist group on water efficiency metrics.

Nir Becker

Nir Becker is a Professor of Economics at Tel-Hai Academic College. Prof. Becker is currently the Dean of the social sciences faculty. He specializes in Environmental and Resources Economics. Prof. Becker has published more than 50 referred papers and 20 chapters. He also edited a book about water policy in Israel. His main area of interest is Cost-Benefit Analysis. He published several papers on water conflicts and cooperation as well as integrative water management. \

Guillermo Donoso

Agricultural and Natural Resource Economist specializing in Water Economics. Full Professor at the Water Law and Economics Center of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC). Ph.D Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics (University of Maryland, College Park). He has researched water governance and water allocation mechanisms with an emphasis on water markets the past 20 years. He has over 16 years of experience as grants researcher in Water Economics and Management in projects for Latin America.

Diane Duport

Diane Dupont is a Professor in the Economics Department at Brock University. She has held the Chancellor’s Chair in Research Excellence at Brock. Her recent research has investigated factors that identify which water utilities operate most efficiently, as well as employed non-market valuation approaches to value water in relation to perceptions of health risks. In addition to her work in the field of economics, she also has worked extensively on transdisciplinary projects relating to water. She is an Associate Editor for Water Resources Research and Water Resources & Economics.

Marian García-Valiñas

Marian A. García-Valiñas is Associate Professor (tenured) at the Department of Economics (Oviedo Efficiency Group) in the University of Oviedo (Spain). She has specialized in environmental economics, and in particular, in water economics. She has evaluated the use of alternative instruments to manage water demands, such as prices, low-consumption technologies, or education tools. Additionally she has assessed the impact of water pricing on affordability and equity issues at the residential sector.

Gavin Hanlon

Gavin has spent the last 15 years as either a CEO or Managing Director in the Water Industry in the States of New South Wales and Victoria. This has included Catchment Management Authorities, Urban utilities and Goulburn Murray Water, Australia’s largest rural water corporation. He has led these organisations through times of extreme drought and flood. He commenced in the New South Wales Government as the Deputy Director General, Water for the Department of Primary Industries in January 2015 and currently has responsibility for the NSW Governments Water reform agenda. Gavin has post graduate degrees in Science and Management. Has completed the Advanced Management Program at INSEAD. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Company Directors and also a Williamson Fellow.

Antonio Massarutto

Antonio Massarutto is professor of Applied Economics at the University of Udine, and associate research fellow at IEFE, Center for research on economics and policy of energy and the environment, Bocconi University, Milano. He started his research career in the early 90s and since then he concentrated most of his interests in the field of water resources policy and water utilities management and regulation. His approach combines many different economic perspectives (environmental economics, regulatory economics, competition policy). He authored many books and articles addressed both to the national and the international audience, with a strong emphasis on applied and policy-oriented research. He regularly consults institutional bodies and operators in the field of water resources and water utilities at many levels (national, regional, local). Among the most recent projects, he was Principal Investigator of the Bocconi University unit participating to the interdisciplinary EU-FP7 funded “DROUGHT-R&SPI” project, aimed at a EU-scale understanding of drought vulnerability and adaptation.

Marielle Montginoul

Marielle Montginoul is economics research director in the French National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture (Irstea) at the Joint Research Unit G-Eau. She works on the understanding of water consumption of farmers and on households’ behavior, on the manner to reveal these behaviors, and on the type of economic tools to manage water withdrawals (individual or collective incentives acting on intrinsic motivations or prosocial behaviors). She has a special interest on water pricing, which is the optimal instrument able to match various objectives (water savings, budget balance and water access).

Steven Renzetti

Steven Renzetti is a Professor of Economics at Brock University and Scientific Director for the Water Economics, Policy and Governance Research Network. He earned his PhD in Economics at UBC in 1990. Professor Renzetti’s research is related to water demands, pricing and the structure of water utilities’ costs of supply. Dr. Renzetti serves on the editorial board of Water Resources Research and was recently appointed to serve on the Science Priorities Committee of the Great Lakes Science Advisory Board.

Barbara Schreiner

Barbara Schreiner is Executive Director of the Pegasys Institute in South Africa. Prior to joining Pegasys she was a senior official in the Department of Water Affairs in South Africa, and Advisor to the Minister of Water Affairs during the development of the National Water Act of 1998. She was responsible for the development of pricing policy while in government, and has worked on the revision of the pricing policy as a consultant subsequently. She is Chairperson of the Water Research Commission of South Africa, and a member of the Board of the International Water Management Institute. She has worked widely in Southern and Eastern Africa, and in India. She has written extensively on issues of water governance, poverty and gender.

Dajun Shen

Dr. Dajun Shen, is a professor at School of Environment and Natural Resources, Renmin University of China. His researches focus on water resources management, including water pricing, water rights, water resources management institution and riverbasin management. Before joining the university in 2011, he had a long working experience in China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research. He is deeply involved in China’s water resources management policies in recent 20 years, and develops the national water rights development framework in 2006 and the stringiest water resources management strategy in 2009. He has published about 60 papers and 10 books.

Yacov Tsur

Yacov Tsur is the Ruth Ochberg Professor at the Department of Environmental Economics and Management at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1984. Tsur¹s water related research deals with conjunctive management of ground and surface water and with water regulation and pricing. Professor Tsur has been actively involved in advising Israel¹s Water Authority and the World Bank on issues concerning water resource management and regulation.