People & Partners

Prof. Guy Midgely

Acting Director School for Climate Studies, Stellenbosch University

Prof. Guy Midgley is the Acting Director School for Climate Studies, at Stellenbosch University. He focuses on climate change risks and solutions in social-ecological systems in southern Africa. NRF A-rated, RSSA and German Humboldt Research Awardee, world’s top 200 in climate change (Thomson Reuters, 2022). Multiple IPCC and IPBES lead authorships, leadership contributions to SA Global Change science and national policy on climate change adaptation.

He has contributed to multiple international policy processes under the UNFCCC and the CBD since the early 2000s. He has served as co-ordinating/lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th assessments (between 2000 and 2021), for the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’ Global and Land Reports, the combined IPBES/IPCC report, and he co-chaired the 2009 CBD Climate Change and Biodiversity Technical Expert Report.

He chaired SA’s Global Change Science Committee in the 1990s and 2000s, helping to grow the annual budget for SA Global Change Science from R10 million to over R100 million. In his role as Chief Director, SANBI, he initiated and finalised the registration of SANBI as a National Implementing Entity for the Climate Change Adaptation Fund of the UNFCCC with an annual budget of over R 100 million, in 2014.

He currently conducts research into climate and global change impacts on ecosystems and species, working in a wide variety of southern African ecosystems, and leads efforts by Stellenbosch University’s School for Climate Studies and Center for Invasion Biology to build multidisciplinary approaches to teaching, researching and communicating climate change issues. He has graduated many MSc and PhD students, with several of his students now occupying senior positions in SA government and national and international academic institutions and NGOs.