Professor Barend Erasmus is one of South Africa’s leading experts in the field of climate change impacts, spatial ecology and land cover change. He is the Dean of the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Pretoria, and this position provides a powerful platform to explore new  partnerships in response to the sustainability challenges facing humanity.  He was the Director of the Global Change Institute (GCI) at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he also held an industry-sponsored research chair in Global Change and Sustainability.  He contributed to several strategic documents on climate change, space science and global change for national departments. Together with a consortium of international authors, he recently co-authored an international report, commissioned by the United Nations, on the state of global land degradation and restoration. 

Prof Erasmus has always had interests in interdisciplinary work. His doctoral degree at the University of Pretoria was the first assessment of climate change impacts on biodiversity in South Africa, and the core paper from that study continues to be relevant in international literature.  Over the last 15 years, more than 50 postgraduate students graduated under his supervision and co-supervision. Together with postgraduate students and collaborators, local and international, he produced more than 90 primary publication outputs, with over 5000 citations in the international literature.