The captivating speaker was Dr Harry Biggs, who has cultivated a lifelong interest in freshwater aquatic biodiversity conservation. Biggs, a former SANParks scientist, worked on ecosystem governance and transdisciplinarity. Whilst at SANParks, he also produced various scientific publications before moving onto adaptive management, socio-economic and governance themes.
Dr Biggs started his professional career as a veterinarian and completed a Diploma in Datametrics. He championed adaptive management and complexity issues which arose fundamentally from the 1990s freshwater initiatives. These included writing the synthesis chapter of the government’s elephant assessment, a chapter and initiative that formed the basis for his talk at NMMU. Although he has retired from SANParks, he is still associated part-time with the NGO AWARD in the Lowveld, promoting systemic collaborative river governance in the Olifants basin.
Caption: Dr Biggs, (middle row, fourth from left) had a wealth of information to share with his audience who engaged actively in discussing the topic of conservation, complexity and adaptive management.