Dr. Joris de Vente is a senior researcher at the Soil and Water Conservation Research Group of the Spanish National Research Council in Murcia (CEBAS-CSIC), where he advances interdisciplinary research on the impacts of environmental change on soil and water resources and ecosystem services from local to regional scales. He has nearly 20 year experience in applied research projects looking for Sustainable Land Management (SLM) and Nature Based Solutions (NBSs) in the context of climate change (adaptation and mitigation) and land degradation (prevention and restoration) in close collaboration with stakeholders.

He is currently involved in national and internationally funded research studying SLM and NBSs to increase water security and ecosystems resilience to land degradation and climate change and to support ecosystem services in semiarid agro-ecosystems, with case studies in Africa and southern Europe. In his research, he combines field experiments, (participatory) monitoring, remote sensing, GIS, and numerical modelling techniques.

Joris is experienced in performing socio-ecological systems analysis to identify barriers and motivators for implementation of Nature Based Solutions, and in the development of multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable business models. Since 2014, he is a member of the Science Policy Interface (SPI), a group of 20 scientists selected to advise the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) on more effective knowledge transfer between scientists and policy makers. He studied Physical Geography at the University of Amsterdam and holds a PhD in Geography from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He started his career at a research-consultancy firm in Delft (the Netherlands) and worked for the Polytechnic University of Cartagena, the University of Aberdeen and for the CSIC. He published over 46 high-impact publications (H-index 23, >1600 citations), participated in over 24 research projects and coordinated 6 as Principal Investigator. Joris regularly collaborates as external advisor in FutureWater projects.