Prof. HANS RUDOLF HERREN

PROF. HANS RUDOLF HERREN (born November 30, 1947) is a Swiss agronomist/entomologist, farmer and development specialist. He was the first Swiss to receive the 1995 World Food Prize and the 2013 Right Livelihood Award for leading a major biological pest management campaign in Africa, successfully fighting the cassava mealybug and averting a major food crisis that could have claimed an estimated 20 million lives. To control the mealybug and eventually numerous others pests, he developed and directed the Africa-wide Biological Control Program under the umbrella of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture(IITA) 1979 to 1994. Herren is now the president and CEO of the Washington-based Millennium Institute(MI) which is assisting countries and development agencies design and implement integrated and coherent policies to achieve the SDGs. He is also the co-founder and the president of the Swiss foundation Biovision for ecological development(BV). He co-chaired the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology for Development(IAASTD) published 2009 under the title "Agriculture at a Crossroads", and was Director General of the International Centre of Insect physiology and Ecology(ICIPE) in Nairobi, Kenya from 1994 to 2005. He was involved in the preparation of the United Nations' Rio +20 Conference on Sustainable Development and subsequently in the SDG formulation with BV and MI. (www.millenniumminstitute.org, www.isdgs.org, www.biovision.ch, www.globalagriculture.org)