Six actions for ecologists in times of planetary crisis

Abstract

Climate breakdown and unprecedented biodiversity loss put humanity at grave risk, and threaten human lives, livelihoods and well-being globally. Ecologists have been instrumental in revealing and detailing some of the mechanisms that drive biodiversity decline, and regularly call for immediate action1. In response to this, a sense of emergency has entered public discourse, and is heightened with each new report and global summit; some ecological societies have been calling on their members to write to their political representatives, and many ecologists have been vocal about both scientific and societal issues on social media. Yet, despite these pockets of activity, it has been argued that the way that the discipline of ecology operates could reflect more clearly the urgency of the situation