Biography | Bruno Oberle — The October Morning Ittigen Put Him Over a Rebuilt Environment Office

The Swiss environment office did not hire a new director and keep the same name.

On 22 June 2005 the Federal Council elected Bruno Oberle, already deputy director since 1999, to succeed Philippe Roch at the Bundesamt für Umwelt, Wald und Landschaft.

He took the chair on 1 October 2005.

Three months later the office itself was rebuilt.

On 26 October 2005 the Council approved the merger, from 1 January 2006, of BUWAL with large parts of the Federal Office for Water and Geology.

The new name was Bundesamt für Umwelt, BAFU.

The 2005 announcement put the seat in Ittigen, outside Bern, with about 390 full-time posts.

Worblentalstrasse 68 was the office he ran.

The 2006 merger pulled water and natural-hazard work into the same building as forest, air, noise, and species protection.

Inland waterways went to the transport office. Dam safety went to the energy office.

Federal communiqués later summarized his decade under three headings: green economy, climate, and biodiversity.

He also held the rank of state secretary for the environment while he ran the office.

He left at the end of 2015.

The Council named Marc Chardonnens as successor on 27 January 2016.

The Ittigen campus has since been rearranged.

By 2026 the office was scheduled to leave Worblentalstrasse 68 for a renovated block at Mühlestrasse 2.

The pin is the street where the rebuilt office actually sat while he held the title.

Photo: A. Buser, ARE, BAFU and METAS campus in Ittigen from the east, April 2014, CC BY-SA 3.0 CH, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Rama, Bruno Oberle at GEO-X, Geneva, 17 January 2014, CC BY-SA 2.0 FR, via Wikimedia Commons.