ABOUT US

Mike is a professional limnologist with 40 years’ experience in environmental management.  He has worked in government and in the private consulting sector undertaking research and development projects. One of his areas of expertise is waste and water management, undertaking research on South African dams, mine water management, and water quality improvement through small scale agriculture.  Mike is a creative problem-solver, and has managed a number of innovative projects, such as the development of aquaponics for small scale farmers with the Agriculture Research Council, development of appropriate waste management strategies for recovery of nutrients from waste for use in hydroponics, development of integrated water management at waste transfer stations, constructed wetland design for contamination control, and prediction of water quality and greenhouse gas conditions in new dams in Africa. Mike has the technical and scientific ability and the passion to find ways to convert waste into useful resources. 

Betsie became an ecologist, receiving an M.Sc. Botany in 2007.  She started working at BKS (Pty) Ltd as an environmental scientist in 2008, with specialisation in ecology.  During this time, she also got experience in water quantity and quality management, wetland delineations and waste water treatment.  Water management became her passion.  In 2017 she received her PhD in Agronomy at the University of Pretoria on the water footprints of vegetable crops.  She developed a simplified framework to determine the volume of water used by agriculture in a catchment, by using crop water footprints together with production data.  In 2018 she started research on water use management in South African Agri-parks, aiming to uplift previously disadvantaged, small-scale farmers.  She has worked on research projects for the Water Research Commission since 2014.