Michele Walters is a senior researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa where she is currently the coordinator for the Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Technical Support Unit for Africa. She trained as a conservation ecologist at the University of Stellenbosch and, after spending four years teaching zoology at Walter Sisulu University, she joined the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) where she was involved in a number of projects dealing with medicinal, invasive and succulent plants of southern Africa. Following this she was the Executive Officer for the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) and ran its project office from the CSIR’s Pretoria campus.Robert (Bob) J. Scholes, is Distinguished Professor of Systems Ecology at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is widely published in the areas of global change, biodiversity, ecosystem services and earth observation. He is or has been a member of several steering committees of international Global Change research programmes, including the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, Diversitas and the Program on Ecosystem Change and Society. He was a member of the team that devised the first Group on Earth Observation Implementation Plan and served as the first chair of the GEO Biodiversity Observation Network. He is a member of the South African Academy of Science, fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa, and a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Science.