Bruno Messerli

Bruno Messerli (17 September 1931, in Belp – 4 February 2019) was a Swiss geographer and university professor who focused on high mountains and highland-lowland linkages. He was appointed Full Professor of Geomorphology in 1968 by the University of Bern, where he taught and carried out research until his retirement in 1996. He contributed significantly to the inclusion of a mountain agenda, Chapter 13 &mdash; Managing Fragile Ecosystems &mdash; Sustainable Mountain Development in Agenda 21, the official action plan of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, the Rio Summit, the Rio Conference, and the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June in 1992.

Education
Bruno Messerli completed his doctorate at the University of Bern in 1962. His doctoral research concerned the geomorphology of the Sierra Nevada in Andalusia, Spain. His post-doctoral Habilitation thesis concerned Quaternary glaciation of mountain ranges around the Mediterranean basin.

Career
Dr. Messerli became a full professor of geography at the University of Bern in 1968. From 1978 to 1983 he served as Director of the Institute of Geography, and as Rector of the university from 1986 to 1987. In 1996 he became Professor Emeritus. Messerli was as President of the International Geographical Union (IGU) from 1996 to 2000. From 1996 to 2001 he served as Co-Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme’s project on Past Global Changes (PAGES), founded by Messerli's friend and colleague at the University of Bern, Hans Oeschger.

Messerli worked on the United Nations University's Himalayan Highland-Lowland Interactive Project together with Professor Jack D. Ives. He was a principal founder of International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), a intergovernmental agency located in Kathmandu, Nepal, and dedicated to interdisciplinary research on mountain systems. With Jack Ives, also, Messerli was one of the handful of montologists advocating for the Mountain Agenda in the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (Chapter 13 in Agenda 21: Managing Fragile Ecosystems: Sustainable Mountain Development). He was a founder of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Nepal and of the Mountain Research Initiative (MRI), based in Switzerland. He had a long collaboration with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which supervises the Mountain Agenda.

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They brought before us the concept of Himalayan Uncertainty from macro to micro levels. He has been strongly involved in the foundation of the ICIMOD- “International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development at Kathmandu”. ICIMOD is an integrated centre for eight Himalayan Countries including India. He organised excellent International UNU Meeting at the ICIMOD, Kathmandu in 1987, where I was invited to participate and contribute. There, I was able to meet most of the active mountain experts of the world. A scientific field trip was also organised by him surroundings to Kathmandu Valley. His pioneering work got published in his monumental book: The Himalayan Dilemma. Reconciling Development and Conservation, UNU / Routledge, London / New York 1989. I assisted him in data collection and he acknowledged me in that book. Being a torchbearer of Mountain studies, his love and dedication for Mountains was deep, enormous and humanitarian, particularly Himalayas always fascinated him.

My first assignment as Full Member in the IGU Commissions/Study Groups started under his leadership and Chairmanship of IGU Commission on “Mountain Geo-ecology and Resource Management” (1988-92). This commission was established at IGC Sydney where I actively participated. Same time I got UNEP-UNITAR Fellowship for training at Lausanne and Geneva in Switzerland. I got some valuable opportunities to visit him at the University of Bern. Once he hosted dinner at his house located in the mountain near Bern, where I met his wife and family members. He organised a field visit to Swiss Mountain for me.

He supervised 35 Ph.D. thesis. He was Vice-President-IGU during 1992-96 and President of the International Geographical Union during 1996-2000. In his Foreword for our Springer Book: “Climate Change, Glacier response, and Vegetation Dynamics in the Himalaya”, published in 2016, he said: The “ICIMOD has calculated that around 1.3 billion people are living in the watersheds of the ten most important rivers from the Himalaya and the Tibet Plateau. What will be the situation at the end of the century! I hope that trans boundary cooperation with this institution will be possible in the future”.

He has devoted his whole life for Mountain Studies. He also contributed to UNCED-Mountain Agenda of the world at Rio Conference and was able to bring before us two group of key worlds: i. Fragile Mountain Ecosystem and ii. Sustainable Mountain Development. His life-long thoughts were published in another famous Book: “Mountains of the World. A Global Priority. Parthenon, Carnforth / New York 1997”. He had played a significant role in bringing the mountains of the world to the level of the united Nations that inserted a mountain chapter in the Agenda 21 and with 10 mountain resolution in the UN General Assembly between 1998 and 2014. Through his efforts, since 2002, 11th December is being celebrated as International Mountain Day. Recently, he said: “the FAO as Task Manager of the mountain chapter in Agenda 21 published a report that 718 million people are living in the mountains of the world, of these 625 million in developing countries and of these 250-370 million live with food insecurity”.

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Awards

 * 1988: Global 500 Roll of Honour of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
 * 1990: Marcel Benoist Prize
 * 2002: Vautrin Lud Prize
 * 2002: King Albert I Gold Medal
 * 2002: Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society
 * 2002: FAO - Medal for the UN - International Year of Mountains, Global Mountain Summit in Bishkek, Kyrghyzstan

Works

 * with H. Oeschger and M. Svilar (ed.): Das Klima—Analysen und Modelle Geschichte und Zukunft. [Climate: Analysis and Models, History and Future] Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 1980. Springer‐Verlag.
 * with JD Ives(ed.): Mountain Ecosystems, Stability and Instability . Spec. Publ. IGU Congress Paris - Alps 1984. Mountain Research and Development
 * with E. Brugger, G. Furrer and P. Messerli (ed.): Upheaval in the mountain area. The development of the Swiss mountain area between independence and dependence from an economic and ecological point of view . Main publishing house, Berne 1984.
 * with JD Ives:
 * with JD Ives
 * with T. Hofer: Floods in Bangladesh. History, Dynamics and Rethinking the Role of the Himalayas . United Nations University Press, Tokyo / New York 2006.