Belinda Reyers

Belinda Reyers is a Professor of Sustainability Science at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a Research Fellow of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. Her research aims to bridge social-ecological systems research and sustainable development practice to help build understanding and capacity needed to navigate the complex development challenges facing Southern Africa. She focuses on the dynamics linking ecosystems and human development, where she has built understanding, methods and approaches, as well as the policy context and capacity in the region for this work. Dr Reyers was Chief Scientist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Stellenbosch, South Africa until 2015 when she moved to Sweden to be the Director of the GRAID Resilience and Development program at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. She returned to South Africa in 2018 to take up the Research Chair in Sustainability Science at Future Africa in Pretoria.

Belinda plays a number of advisory and leadership roles to national and international bodies including: past Vice Chair of the Science Committee of Future Earth; Coordinating Lead Author and Review Editor of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), UN-DESA Expert Groups on the Sustainable Development Goals, Advisory Group of the Montpellier Advanced Knowledge Institute on Transitions. She was recently appointed onto the advisory board of the UNDP Human Development Report and onto the High-Level Advisory Panel (HLAP) for the Special Report on Human Security by the UN Human Development Report Office.