Quick Facts
Biography
Mario Christian Meyer is a Swiss-Brazilian doctor and advocate for the sustainable development of the Amazonia and preservation of its indigenous cultural heritage.
Early life
Meyer was born in Salta, Argentina. His father, Hermann Meyer, a Swiss polytechnics engineer specializing in agronomy, became a fazendeiro (large plantation farmer), first in Argentina, in the early 1930s, then in Brazil in 1954. His mother, Anne Camille Blanc de Corbières Meyer, was a Swiss structural engineer. The young Meyer spent his first months in Salta, where his father had established a Hacienda and an olive oil production plant. Because of Peronism, with its nationalism and isolationism, his family lost everything and, in 1954, consequently moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In the book Embracing Amazonia published in Brazil, 2008, Eliana Spengler (Giant of Ecology Award coordinator) talks about Meyer's childhood and youth:
The stories of Brazilian authors Jose de Alencar, Castro Alves and Machado de Assis fueled Meyer's love of the Amazon, while reading Montaigne's Bon sauvage, Rousseau's État de Nature and Locke's concepts of empiricism and tabula rasa directed his thoughts on the nature of human development.
Later in life, Meyer experienced an Índios initiation rite, an experience that sealed his commitment to the Amazonian cause.
Career
Early career
Meyer studied medicine, specializing in Developmental Neuropsychology and Child Psychiatry. He went on to teach at the Sorbonne in Paris. His thesis Apprentissage de la langue maternelle écrite: étude sur des populations autochtones dites socio-culturellement défavorisées dans une approche interdisciplinaire, prefaced by Prof. Dr. Julian de Ajuriaguerra of the Collège de France, published by UNESCO, examined the problems of underprivileged indigenous populations in learning written language.
This work for UNESCO has induced Prof. Dr. Meyer to study the contribution of western sciences (neuropsychiatry, neurolinguistics, neuropsychology, psychomotricity, etc.) to the approach of learning disabilities occurring with illiteracy in the developing countries. This official mission led him into the heart of the Amazonian Rainforest for the first time, where he undertook an exhaustive case study about the different forms of graphic representations of the written language used by the Amerindians in their pictograms, ideograms, petroglyphs and body paintings (e.g. Genipapo – Genipa americana, Urucu – Bixa orellana), obtained using plant pigments, where he discovered the power of their active ingredients. Meyer evolved from this work to a general effort to promote the value of indigenous ancestral knowledge and to preserve their natural environment (the Amazon).
Focusing then on the cross-cultural psychiatry's field, he develops through the 1980s his researches for a better understanding of the interactions between Culture and Psychism.
In 1989, Meyer was made Fellow of the Paris Society of Medicine (in French Société de Médecine de Paris), founded on the "2 Germinal year IV" (French Revolutionary calendar, i.e. 22 March 1796), originating from the Société Royale de Médecine founded in 1730. There, he presented his works on Amazônia, which were to give birth to new medicines.
Ancestral knowledge and New pharmacology
His missions in the Amazon rainforest (see Map at right) in close contact with the « People of Nature », the Índios gave him a new conception of Man-Nature interaction. They lead him to combine his expertise in neuropsychology in the field of linguistic and cultural diversity with his experience in biological diversity and its preservation by biotechnologies.
This association allowed him to fight for the transformation of the Amazonian biodiversity and medicinal plants into a truly genuine pharmacology benefiting both Amazônia and the Western world.
Thus, from 1992 Prof. Dr. Meyer participated as an official member of the State of Amazonas delegation in the UN Earth Summit Rio 92.
It is in this context that, in 1994, he coordinated on Brazilian territory – after a due hand-over by the French Ambassador in Brasília – the first Ministerial « mission for biotechnology to valorize biodiversity » ever to be organized between France and the State of Amazonas.
This mission, which had been initiated in 1993 by the French Minister of Research and Space Hubert Curien (via the National Programme of Biotechnologies, directed by Prof. Dr. Daniel Thomas), was carried out under the auspices of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the active involvement of the Governor of the State of Amazonas.
In 1994, Meyer appeared as a special delegate from Brazil to the UNESCO's World Symposium on Literacy in order to present his new approach merging linguistic abilities and biodiversity know how.
In 1999, Dr. Meyer was appointed by UNESCO to write a report on the means to consider in order to establish a "bridge of equitable communication and cooperation" between the Amazonian Amerindians and their traditional knowledge, on the one hand, and the Western world and its modern Culture, on the other hand. The bottom line was to set up the appropriate tools and create the necessary procedures for such a cooperation to be made possible, taking into account the specificity of cultural diversity, the way both these cultures function, and the pragmatic instruments of cooperation.
Since then, he has gone on to found PISAD: Programme International de Sauvegarde de l'Amazônia, Mata Atlântica et des Amérindiens pour le Développement Durable [International Program to Safeguard Amazônia, the Mata Atlântica and the Amerindians for Sustainable Development], a humanist and non-profit organization. To implement it, he has created a "platform of fair and equitable dialogue – a bridge – between preserved Índios and western scientists" to valorize the ancestral knowledge of the Índios and the Amazonian biodiversity. Originally, Meyer set up an operational concept and methodology regarding the psycho-cultural revitalization of endangered Amerindian knowledge which he had pioneered as Cogni'Índios.
Recent work
Meyer is currently adapting a process for the bio-production of active ingredients contained in medicinal plants to the needs and abilities of the Índios, enabling them to manage the production of these pharmaceuticals and ensuring them economic autonomy and self-sustainable development. This bio-production is based upon the alliance between the Índios' know-how and a green biotechnology (Plant Milking Technology) developed by INPL – Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine (National Polytechnic Institute of Lorraine), France.
UNESCO's Participation Programme entitled "Amerindian Communication and Sustainable Economic Development Programme for a Culture of Peace in Brazilian Amazônia" (00 BRA 603), which Meyer managed from 1999 to 2003, has been a central element of his work and a starting point for his further action.
In the last years, Meyer has been concentrating his activities on the innovative transfer of the "plant milking technology" to an Índios' community in the virgin rainforest: this is a unique example in recent history of an actual biotechnology transfer to Amerindians.
He is now focusing his work on the goal-achievement methodology of his original research and development programme to ensure a functional and active link between the Índios' ancestral knowledge and Scientist's advanced biotechnology.
Awards and recognition
For his efforts, Meyer was awarded the Brazilian prize "Gigante da Ecologia" (Giant of Ecology) in 2008.