Nikolai Sinsdorf

Nikolai Sindorf works at the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA) as Chief Technical Analyst. His work starts from a simple question: how do societies keep functioning as the water they rely on changes? Answering this is harder, so he builds resilience indicators for the Water Resilience Tracker. He explores these with governments, river basins, companies and development programmes, drawing on eco-hydrology, systems thinking, and planning under deep uncertainty. Before AGWA he worked for WWF and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and consulted for the World Bank, the Mekong River Commission and UNOPS. From Egypt’s canals to Asia’s mountains, he learned that many climate problems have water solutions, just as many water problems have people solutions. He borrows from the arts and philosophy to make technical conversations more human. Having lived in several countries, he has settled, for now, in Delft, where he remains cautiously optimistic.