Bernt Rydgren is a Dr of Science in physical geography and has three more degrees in geography and hydrology from Uppsala University. He has 40+ years of broad experience from socio-environmental and water-resources work at both practical and strategic levels, mainly in the power sector with a special focus on hydropower. Bernt has worked in over 50 countries on six continents.

Bernt’s career includes 4 years of village-based land-use planning in Lesotho, teaching/research at Uppsala University and two years with WWF-Sweden followed by 14 years at Vattenfall, the largest power utility in Sweden, with strategic assignments and external consulting for developers, development banks, etc. He was project manager for the world’s first ISO 14025-certified Environmental Product Declaration (Lule River hydropower) in 1999 and was Vice President for Environmental Affairs for Vattenfall’s Latin American investment company in 2000-2001, based in the USA. The last 20+ years have been in consulting, with a year spent in Tanzania running the development of the Ruhudji HPP, and he is now employed as a Principal Environmental Consultant at Sweco.

He is an Accredited Lead Assessor for the Hydropower Sustainability Protocol and has been involved in >20 assessments in accordance with the various Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Tools.

‍