Willi Zimmermann 80 - from Black forest boy to land policy expert on the world stage

What a rich life, what an incredible career: born on 1 April 1945 into a family of small farmers with seven children in the southern Black Forest, our jubilarian's path led him, after training as a surveying technician and engineer, to his first assignment abroad in Cameroon 1967 at the age of 22, where he spent three years demarcating and registering customary land jointly with traditional authorities and training surveyors on behalf of the German Development Service (DED). From there, he for six months overland through the Sahara back to Germany to study geodesy at the University of Technology Karlsruhe from 1970 to 1974, followed by ‘higher state examination for land administration’ and entry into the State of Baden-Württemberg land consolidation and land development authority. Why land consolidation? Because the topic of land rights and land use probably characterised him from birth and because his lifelong empathy for the rural population led to his commitment to a fairer land policy. He would certainly have become a great land consolidation and land development leader if his other great passion had not led him and his wife Christa, a DED colleague, out into the big world again after a few years, this time - on leave from government services for three years - on behalf of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) to Borneo (East Kalimantan), where the conflicting interests are concerned with the recording and objective evaluation of land resources and land use. This is where his profile emerges as a global campaigner for smallholders and environmental protection through fair land policy and sustainable land management. Back in Europe, his next stop was Portugal, where from 1984 to 1989 he (on behalf of GIZ) was instrumental in supporting the establishment of a modern land consolidation and land development administration in the run-up to accession to the European Union.