Prof Klaus Kellner from the North-West University (NWU) was recently appointed by the Director General of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) to serve on the Project Steering Committee (PSC) of the 7th Global Environmental Facility (GEF) funded project.

The GEF-funded project falls within the Land Degradation focal area and is titled “Mainstreaming sustainable land management (SLM) for large-scale impact in grazing lands of the Limpopo and Northern Cape provinces in South Africa”.

Prof Kellner has more than 40 years of experience in the field of land degradation and restoration ecology. He has served as the president of the Committee for Science and Technology for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) at global level, and done many projects for the DFFE and the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD). The CST also represented South Africa at the Conference of Parties of the UNCCD for many years.

The main objective of the GEF-funded project is to assist South Africa in achieving Land Degradation Neutrality targets by 2030 through establishing an enabling environment for scaling up good sustainable land management practices. The International Union for Conservation of Nature is the executing entity of the project, while the DFFE is the implementing partner supported by the DALLRD.

“I feel honoured for being acknowledged for all the hard work that I have done over the last couple of years at national and international level,” says Prof Kellner.

Prof Klaus Kellner is currently a scientist at the NWU’s Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management and the principal investigator for a large land degradation project in South Africa and Namibia. This project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany under the Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL 2.0) programme.

The NWU applauds Prof Kellner on this appointment and looks forward to his contributions.

Prof Klaus Kellner