Ambassador (Ret) Ram Aviram

Lead Consultant, BIT

Ambassador Aviram is the lead consultant of BIT – Consultancy a multidisciplinary consulting agency active in the sphere of cross boundary water interactions. His experience is based over 25 years of multilateral and bilateral diplomacy, while serving in high ranking positions at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs including Chief of Staff of H.E. Shimon Peres, Ambassador to Greece and long term service periods in Europe and Asia and more than 6 years of private sector and academia activities on cross-boundary water interactions.

His career at the Ministry was highly connected to hydro politics and water related issues. His responsibilities included Head of Israel’s negotiating team on water issues within the framework of the multi-lateral peace process (1995-2000) the group initiated and established significant regional water related projects such as the Middle East Desalination Research Center in Muscat, Oman. He participated in numerous international forums and multilateral negotiations on environment and water issues. As Chief of Staff (2000-2003) he took part in the bi-lateral negotiations with Arab neighboring countries including on water issues. While joining the private sector (2006) he established BIT –Consultancy which specializes in providing services for cross-boundary water projects. BIT is the geopolitical consultant for the Rehabilitation of the Lower Jordan River Project. BIT gave services among others to: multinationals like Tetra-Tech in the context of the Red Sea- Dead Sea Water Project; NGOs like Friends of Earth Middle East while developing strategy for cross border water cooperation; think-tanks like AIX in establishing novel ideas for cross border water related conflict resolution; water technology providers like GES and water utilities like Mekorot in business development operations; and government agencies like TEKES of Finland within a project aiming at the establishment of overall strategy for support of export oriented water industries. He is a lecturer at Haifa University. He is a founding member of Israel Desalination Association and member of the board of Waterfronts Israel Water Industry Association.