Director of the IE Center for Water & Climate Adaptation, IE University, Gonzalo is a senior economist (with 28 years of experience) working worldwide (in 80+ countries: European Union, USA, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East, other countries in Africa, Central and South Asia, Australia...).
He specializes in the economic management of natural resources: water, climate, energy, air pollution, oceans, biological diversity and ecosystem services, etc., with emphasis on their complex links with economic and social development.
Gonzalo has been recently appointed (2023) by the European Commission as a member of the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance, responsible for the taxonomy of sustainable investments of the European Union in addition to the standardization of ESG metrics, the non-financial disclosure by companies, the analysis of flows in capital markets towards more sustainable patterns, the amendment of corporate social responsibility practices, the prevention of 'green washing' practices, etc.
Gonzalo has worked for more than two decades as an international consultant for multilateral organizations such as the European Commission, to which he is 'water policy advisor' (through its DG Environment), the European Parliament (to which he also advises on water policy change), a number of UN agencies and programs (UN Water, UNESCO, FAO, WHO-PAHO, UNDP, etc.), the World Bank Group (including its Water Resources Group 2030 initiative, but also the World Bank itself and the International Finance Corporation, IFC) or the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
He is also a senior advisor and member of the OECD Water Governance Initiative, the world's most important policy forum in this field. Gonzalo is First Vice President of Water Europe, the former EU Water and Sanitation Technology Platform (WssTP), and Director on the Board of the International Desalination Association (IDA). He is also the first non-Dutch 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 Prize laureates in Economics and Peace, such as Professors George A. Akerlof, Jean Tirole and Mohan Munasinghe. He was also a senior faculty member at the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC), which includes a digital design and fabrication laboratory linked to the MIT (FAB LAB BCN).
Gonzalo, a professor at the Universidad de Alcalá (UAH) for more than 15 years, is also a mentor in international programs to support female postdoctoral researchers in Germany (Association of Leibniz Institutes) or the United States (Techwomen), and the author of numerous books and scientific publications and articles, as well as a keynote speaker at global events.
