Water Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow joins the European Commission

Iban Ortuzar Fernandez, Water Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow (PDF) in the Department of Economics, joins the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission as an Economic Analyst.

Iban first visited the Department of Economics in 2022 through the University of Waterloo’s IVGS program under supervision of Professor Roy Brouwer, whilst doing his PhD studies at the University of Girona in Spain.

His PhD research focused on assessing the impacts of climate-driven water shortages and droughts across the economy. He developed an economic optimization model to re-allocate limited available water resources across sectors during water shortages to minimize economy-wide losses.

Following the completion of his PhD in 2024, he returned to the Department of Economics as a PDF, again under the supervision of Professor Roy Brouwer and as a member of the Water Economics Research Group (WERG). He was a valued member of the Water Institute community, contributing both his expertise and collaborative spirit to interdisciplinary water research.

During his PDF, Iban worked on the development of integrated environmental-economic land-use change models for Environment and Climate Change Canada to study possible future land-use changes in Ontario under climate change using the IPCC’s Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP’s), and their potential impact on wetlands and peatlands.

Ontario’s peatlands act as significant carbon sinks, absorbing atmospheric CO₂ and storing enormous amounts of carbon in their waterlogged soils, making them crucial allies in fighting climate change. However, these ecosystems are sensitive to disturbance from activities like land conversion and resource extraction, which can release their stored carbon, turning them into massive sources of greenhouse gases.

At the JRC, Iban will work in the Fair and Sustainable Economy, Innovation Policies and Economic Impact Unit, contributing to the analysis of the economic, social and environmental impacts of EU trade and industrial policies using macroeconomic input-output and general equilibrium models.

^{Originally published by the Department of Economics.}

^{Banner photo: The EU Science Hub in Seville, Spain.}