Nikolai Sindorf

Chief Technical Analyst

Nikolai joined AGWA in 2025 as Chief Technical Analyst and is currently based in Delft, the Netherlands. In this role, he leads the technical analysis within the Water Resilience Tracker program and will develop and expand the concept of resilience indicators. He explores and develops innovative solutions in water management, eco-hydrology, and climate adaptation problems to feed into technical work of AGWA’s different programs.

Nikolai’s expertise is in environmental assessments, focusing on freshwater ecosystems in relation to climate change. These assessments incorporate environmental flows, conservation landscape planning, and identifying impacts and opportunities of large-scale infrastructure such as hydropower dams and irrigation systems. 

Prior to joining AGWA, he has worked for various international organizations including the WWF, the World Bank, the Mekong River Commission, and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS). In these capacities, he focused respectively on:  snow leopard landscape conservation under a changing climate in High Asia; introduction of environmental flow requirements in Kyrgyzstan; capacity building related to conservation of ecological sensitive areas vis-à-vis hydropower development in the Mekong River basin; and strengthening water management in the Fayoum Oasis in Egypt.

In collaboration with IWMI, Nikolai has designed a series of board games to facilitate cross learning among various key stakeholders in the context of wetlands management, hydropower dam development, land use planning, and agricultural commercialization.  

He has also worked as a teacher (Laos) and a teaching assistant (Netherlands) in Dutch language and culture for refugee and expat children.

Over the time span of more than 20 years, he has worked on assignments in Nepal, Bhutan, India, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the USA and Egypt. Nikolai holds a M.Sc. in Irrigation and Water Engineering from Wageningen University (1999).