Professor Reinette "Oonsie" Biggs is a South African sustainability scientist whose research focuses on food, water, and the benefits people receive from nature.
Her father then was hired to work in South Africa's Kruger National Park and her family moved to Skukuza Restcamp where she grew up surrounded by wildlife and research.
[1] “Growing up in the Kruger National Park in South Africa as apartheid came to an end, Reinette (Oonsie) Biggs was confronted with a pressing question: Could her country's natural resources give people a chance to shake off poverty without undermining the resource base for future generations?”[1] Biggs studied Geography (BSc) at the University of South Africa and Applied Environmental Sciences (BScHons) at the University of Natal.
[6] She is also a co-founder, along with Garry Peterson and Elena Bennett, of the Seeds of a Good Anthropocene project,[7] that aims to analyze, create, and enable the creation of socially and ecologically just, desirable and sustainable futures.
She also became co- director of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at Stellenbosch University, which takes a transdisciplinary approach to sustainability science connecting policy, practice and local stakeholders.