Antonella Cagnolati, president
A qualified economist, and European civil servant for more than 30 years, Antonella Cagnolati was Director of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe and manager of the environment, regional development and local authorities sector in the Parliamentary Assembly of the same structure. She is currently working as an expert consultant in governance, local democracy and citizenship. In this role she coordinated the 2013 and 2014 editions of the Council of Europe’s Lisbon Forums focusing on the aftermath of the Arab Spring, electoral processes and democratic governance in Southern Mediterranean countries. She is co-founder of Solidarity Water Europe, created following the Blue Europe action plan that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe organised in 1993-1994.
Jean Bosco Bazié, vice-president
Jean Bosco Bazié holds a degree in engineering and is currently General Manager of Eau Vive International based in Burkina Faso. He has been a partner of the ISW movement for more than 15 years and continues to be a close, high-level collaborator.
Pierre-Marie Grondin, vice-president
Pierre-Marie Grondin and his team have been collaborators and partners since the ISW and then the SWE movement began.
Pierre-Marie is an engineer in tropical agriculture, aquaculture and sanitation. He has worked in different roles around the world (Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Guadeloupe and Guinea Conakry), in both consultancy firms and companies. He returned to France in 1991 and specialised in environmental protection and became executive secretary of the Programme Solidarité Eau within the NGO Gret, then director in 1993. Focusing on access to water and sanitation for all, Programme Solidarité Eau is recognised as the main international network providing advisory services and sharing innovative solutions in the sector.
Dominique Mostert, treasurer and secretary
Dominique Mostert is General Manager of Project Morse. With a Bachelor of Business Administration, he has acquired sound experience in the logistical organisation of large events, official events, communication management and media relations (design and implementation of communication plans, speech writing, press release preparation, design and implementation of advertising campaigns, production of pamphlets and internet sites for the general public), human resource management and administrative and financial management.
Suren Gevinian, member
Suren Gevinian holds a master’s degree from the London School of Economics (LSE) and worked as a consultant for UNESCO at their Paris HQ, UNDP, and the World Bank. For many years prior to that he managed international projects in strategy, investment and risk management from London.
Suren has been assisting UNESCO IHP with transboundary, governance and IGRAC with groundwater management projects, SDC with the implementation of the Water Diplomacy especially in Central Asia and initiation of the Blue Peace movement.
Through his active engagement in international projects, he has established himself as a proactive and impartial mediator bridging people and countries together.
He has been an advocate for Youth development and engagement in water, climate, and sustainable development issues. His personable approach and mentorship helped many young water leaders. Especially he took a very hands on role in the creation of the Central Asian water youth proactive network . His current endeavour is the Southeast Asian youth empowerment.
Suren has also been actively involved in the promotion and development of UNESCO Global Geoparks worldwide. Impact investment and innovative finance have also been within Suren’s professional interest.
Manuel Fulchiron, member
Manuel Fulchiron is trained as an environmental engineer and also holds a degree in political science. Over his career, he has developed his skills in water resource and basin management, forests and protected natural areas, and natural risks. Today, he is the director of a key agency at the National Forest Office (ONF) in France.
Fulchiron is an enthusiastic proponent of youth initiatives. He has been a strong supporter of the global Youth for Water and Climate (#YWC) platform, a staff member at the Global Water Partnership, and is involved with the Stockholm Junior Water Prize (#SJWP). In his current role, he remains very active in these activities.
Christophe Brachet, member
Christophe Brachet graduated in 1988 from the Ecole Centrale de Paris, and has over two decades of experience in Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM), hydrology, large water infrastructures, climate change adaptation and flood risk management.
Brachet is currently the Deputy General Manager of the International Office for Water (OIEau) in Paris. He joined IOWater in 2010 after serving with the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs as advisor to the Congo River basin organization (CICOS) in Kinshasa from 2008 to 2010, and to the Niger Basin Authority (NBA) in Niamey from 2003 to 2008. He was previously head of the water and environment department at the French engineering firm ISL Ingénierie.
Luc Vescovi, member
Luc is a biologist by training, with a PhD in water science from INRS in Montreal and a master’s in environmental engineering from the EFPL in Switzerland. His career in environment spans twenty years, with key accomplishments in the areas of adaptation/resilience to climate change, water resources, and sustainable development. He currently works on the sustainable development portfolio at the Quebec Ministry of Sustainable Development, Environment and Climate Change.
Luc has published numerous journal articles as sole author or contributor, and has worked with many Canadian and international environmental organizations. In 2013, he completed a mission to Cameroon with CUSO International and the African Model Forests Network. He is also an experienced manager, with stints as a director of operations for different organizations. He is the former Chair in Sustainable Development and Corporate Social Responsibility at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
François Münger, member
François Münger is a Swiss native who holds master’s degrees in geophysics and mineralogy (Univ. Lausanne), hydrogeology (Univ. Neuchâtel), and environmental engineering and biotechnology (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology – EPFL), who is currently head of the Geneva Water Hub. His career spans many public and private institutions in Switzerland, Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. He notably was the Chief of the Central America Water Programme for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and a Senior Water Specialist at the World Bank for a deep borehole drilling project in Africa. After heading SDC’s Global Water Program for the past eight years, François was awarded the title of Swiss Special Envoy for Water and given responsibility for the creation and development of the Geneva Water Hub in 2015. This advocacy organization and think tank will become a centre of the University of Geneva in 2017.
Elisabeth Wild, member
In 2000, Elisabeth Wild had the honour to accompany and assist Raymond Jost as a volunteer, sharing his desire to serve the poor to ensure their rights to clean water, sanitation and shared prosperity. She continued these activities in earnest after retiring in 2013 from a teaching career in France, the United States and Montreal.
Elisabeth has participated many conferences and events in the last 16 years: the 11th European Conference for Water in Hungary, the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the World Youth Parliament for Water (Quebec 2002, Marseilles 2012), global Water Forums in Kyoto, Istanbul, and Marseilles; the Project of the Great Lakes-St Lawrence and the Gulf Symphony (2012) and its exhibition “Major Cities / Great Lakes / Great Basin” in Chicago, Baie Saint-Paul (2014) and Paris (2015). She also assisted with communications for the launch of the Drop of Hope hot air ballon, the watering can and giant clock displayed in front of the United Nations in New York. She has given workshops on various topics in Montreal, Strasbourg and Paris.
Georgy Simeonov, member
Partner of SWE on behalf of the town of Stara Zagora (Bulgaria), Georgy has contributed significantly to the success of the European Youth Parliaments for Water in Central and Eastern Europe. He is also our “entry point” to the 50 villages which are administered by Stara Zagora and with which SWE is preparing a project for access to water and sanitation for all. He is director of the sustainable development and European integration department in the Stara Zagora district. He plays a key role in international exchanges among 22 cities of Greater Europe.
Olivier Thibault, member
Olivier Thibault trained as a civil, water and forestry engineer. Formerly the director general of the Artois-Picardie Water Agency, he has built his career around improving the environment, working in the fields of water, waste, hunting and the protection of biodiversity. He has been director general of France’s National Office of Hunting and Wildlife (ONFCS) since 2017.
Olivier played a key role organizing the 2nd World Youth Parliament for Water, run by the ISW and its partners, held in Marseille, France at the 6th World Water Forum.
Sonja Behmel, Member
Sonja Behmel is a geographer specializing in limnology and holds a PhD in land use planning and regional development. With many years of experience in water management in Canada and Europe, she is actively involved in research and innovation and in the training of the next generation, in addition to being the author of numerous scientific publications. For more than 10 years, Dr. Behmel has also distinguished herself as Agiro’s scientific coordinator and as a volunteer in various organizations dedicated to water protection, both here and abroad. Over the years, she has won numerous awards for the quality of her work, both scientific and entrepreneurial.
In 2013, in partnership with academics and business people, she founded WaterShed Monitoring, a company that aims to provide stakeholders involved in integrated water management with innovative technological solutions to meet the challenges of storing and analyzing water quality data, while offering optimization and coaching services to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge to meet the needs of water management, land use planning, and scientific research. To this end, WaterShed Monitoring develops and markets EnkiMD, a one-stop shop for water data access based on the principles of “intelligent community” and “learning community”.
