Peter Messerli

Peter Messerli is professor for sustainable development and the director of the Wyss Academy for Nature at the University of Bern, Switzerland. As a land system scientist and human geographer, his research interests lie in the sustainable development of social-ecological systems in Africa and Asia. He focuses on increasingly globalized and competing claims on land, rural transformation processes, and spatial manifestations of their outcomes in the Global South.
For more than ten years, he led research programs in Africa and Asia, and from 2009 to 2020 he was Director of the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) at the University of Bern. Over the years, he has worked at the crossroads of science, politics, and society – from local projects to international initiatives.
He co-chaired the Global Land Programme of Future Earth and was appointed by the UN Secretary-General to help lead the team of independent scientists that wrote the first Global Sustainable Development Report in 2019. In 2023, he was honored as a Fellow of the International Science Council (ISC) in recognition of his efforts to promote science as a global public good.