Dr. Olcay Űnver, Deputy Director of Land and Water Division at FAO headquarters in Rome is now a member of the Steering Committee of WLE. Ünver’s responsibilities at the FAO include the water, land and soil related activities and programs, mainstreaming water across the various sectors and disciplines, and cooperating with partners and stakeholders within and outside the UN system.
Before joining FAO he was Coordinator of the UN World Water Assessment Programme and Director of the UNESCO Programme Office on Global Water Assessment. Prior positions include a professorship with Kent State University, Ohio, where he founded the Euphrates-Tigris Initiative for Cooperation (ETIC), between Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. While he was the president of the Southeastern Anatolia Project Regional Development Administration in Turkey, Ünver led the transformation of a large infrastructure project into a sustainable socioeconomic development program.
In 1999 he was listed among the 19 “European Visionaries” by the Time Magazine. Ünver holds a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees, also in Civil Engineering, from Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.