Hanspeter Liniger, although retired since 2020, continues with an assignment at the University of Bern, Centre for Development and Environment and Department of Geography. He is the former Director and founding member of the World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT), a global network for sharing and using knowledge on Sustainable Land Management (SLM) (www.wocat.net).
He has a continued engagement to use his experience in the field and working with partners at the local, national, and global level (e.g. UNCCD) to promote and out scale sustainable land and watershed management. The specific focus in on nature-based solutions for disaster risk reduction, assessment of on- and offsite impacts of land management practices (especially in mountain and dryland ecosystems and watersheds and particularly in the neglected rangelands), awareness raising using video and photography, and capacity building of professionals and students.
He has vast field experience all over the world: (a) through a long term collaboration with the Universities and Ministries in Kenya, including 10 years’ living and working in Kenya and over 25 years of regular investigations and field assignments in Kenya related to land and watershed management (mainly in the Ewaso Ng’iro Basin), (b) through field assignments in EU funded research and WOCAT related projects, with national partner organizations in European countries, Middle East, Syria Central Asia, Mongolia, Nepal, India, Cambodia, China, Eastern and Southern Africa, Tunisia, Morocco, Colombia and Haiti.
He is author of several WOCAT books and guidelines such as “Sustainable rangeland management in Sub-Saharan Africa”, “making sense of research” “where the land is greener”, “water harvesting”, Where people and their land are safer”, and a series of scientific papers.