At sea it is said to look upon the captain’s face to gauge the severity of the storm and whether you should prepare to start swimming or not. The comfort one feels to see a calm captain issuing orders when all around you, chaos reigns, makes a massive difference in how you play your part in these situations. I’ve been privileged to see Johan for the past fourteen years steer SAEON through both good and challenging times, always calm, collected and deliberate in his actions. I’ve personally learned a lot from his leadership. ~ Shaun Deyzel   

A brief overview 

I left SAEON nearly four years ago, which is about as long as I was with SAEON (early 2014 to early 2018). Much has happened since I left, notably the conversion of ideas to a complex reality as the Expanded Freshwater and Terrestrial Environmental Observation Network (EFTEON) and the Shallow Marine and Coastal Research Infrastructure (SMCRI) come together. They will no doubt make major contributions to meeting the environmental challenges of this century.

South Africa continues to be a scientific leader in the global south, with our own facilities, a long history of data collection, analysed by our own researchers, with a tradition of turning results from our science into policy. That this should be so is not automatic. The success of science in this country depends on people who have the vision and the capability to build the organisations that support the science.

Johan Pauw is one of those rare people who converts ideas into human and physical reality. Back in 1999 the first conversations that led to the creation of SAEON began. It wasn’t quite a garage shed but in 2002 SAEON began with a staff of two: Johan Pauw and Eva Mudau. He must have worked all day and dreamt all night thinking through his plans and how to achieve them.

Starting with very few resources he succeeded in building the large vibrant enterprise we now know as SAEON. Among his diverse talents is the critical one of spotting people with the ability and the passion to build the nodes which were the basis of the SAEON vision. Only by distributing the research and monitoring platforms to diverse parts of South Africa could we do justice to South Africa’s astonishing biological, ecological and social diversity.

As a terrestrial ecologist I had some exposure to our diverse terrestrial biomes. However, I had stopped short at the seashore. Yet among my richest memories of my time at SAEON were those of the intricacies of coastal zone ecology and being awakened to the importance of the Agulhas Current and the technology used to study it.

Now Johan is a strictly terrestrial man. It was easy to see that by his nervousness on the ski boat as we set out to explore Algoa Bay. Yet he had initiated these two marine nodes which had thrived under the inspired node managers and researchers. The breadth and depth of SAEON’s reach might have defeated a lesser man but Johan came through it all still looking (quite) young and almost unlined with worry wrinkles.

An important part of the original vision was the training of a new generation of South Africans through exposure to our remarkable natural environments. From the high school classes taught by node staff to the PhDs and postdocs employed in SAEON research, you can see the great success of the training endeavour. I was very aware as a university professor of how many postgraduate students were keen on working with SAEON because it gave them a feeling of a cooperative and targeted endeavour, larger than themselves and important to society. I have no doubt that SAEON has helped build the foundations of a future generation of scientists and citizens aware of, and capable of, coping with the environmental challenges of the future.

Back in 2002 who would have believed that so much was achievable in the 20 years of SAEON’s existence. We owe a great deal to Johan Pauw for his foresight, astuteness, understanding of organisation and people, and his ability to bring it all together.

I hope he will continue to help SAEON with a steady hand, where needed, far into the future. The need for SAEON in this challenging century has never looked greater.   

~ William Bond, Emeritus Professor, University of Cape Town, Chief Scientist, SAEON, 2014–2018

Pioneering and entrenching long-term research

Johan originally had a notion, passionately advanced using whatever-it-takes.

The scene was set in Florence, Italy, in July 1998. For the first time, African countries participated at an International Long-Term Ecological Research Network (ILTER) event and expressed interest in joining this network to document global change. South Africa was represented by Johan Pauw, who used the opportunity to invite the next ILTER Annual General Meeting (AGM) to Skukuza, South Africa, in 1999.

At the Skukuza workshop organised by Johan, ILTER representatives discussed with scientists from African institutions the idea of developing LTER programmes. Exchange visits between US-LTER sites and African countries followed to facilitate the planning of African country LTER networks. Meticulous planning entailing consultative and information-exchange processes spearheaded by Johan led to the establishment of SAEON in 2002 and the roll-out of the initial six SAEON nodes in the next decade.