Felipe Tapia-Valencia is a lawyer (JD) in Alberto Hurtado University (Chile) and MSc in Governance of Risk and Resources at Heidelberg University (Germany). He also has postgraduate diplomas in Water Management (University of Chile, Chile) and Water Justice (Centro Bartolomé Las Casas, Perú-Wageningen University, Netherlands).
Regarding his academic career, he´s been working as a university professor in Alberto Hurtado University and other different Law Schools in Chile, during the last seven years, where he has dictated the courses of environmental and water law. Likewise, he has participated in global academics networks, such as Water Justice Alliance and WATERLAT Gobacit. His investigation and papers published are related to the human right to water (and its implementation), water conflicts, water Scarcity and rights of nature, focused in Latin America and Chile, particularly. He is also co-founder and President of the Newenko Foundation, a Chilean NGO which promotes the human right to water in Chile and also its community management. Besides, he works in the Chilean Water Agency (Dirección General de Aguas) where he is part of the program of strengthening and supporting the formation of Water User Associations to promote access to water in peasant family farming (“Convenio INDAP-DGA”, in collaboration with the Agriculture Ministry of Chile).