Re-Culturing Nature to Sustain Biodiversity in the Anthropocene
We were delighted to welcome world renowned researcher Erle Ellis to LCAB to share his work with us.
Most of terrestrial nature, including Earth’s most biodiverse landscapes, have been shaped by millennia of sustained human use. These cultured ecosystems, including those sustained by indigenous peoples for millennia, and not natures without people, currently sustain the vast majority of biodiversity. Even Earth’s most intensively used working landscapes, including cities and farms, are crucial to achieving a nature positive future.
Transformative changes in the cultural aspirations, institutions and practices that shape societal use and interactions with nature have unprecedented planetary potential to enhance and expand the biodiversity sustaining capacities of the anthropogenic biosphere of the Anthropocene.
Erle Ellis is Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). A Global Highly Cited Researcher, he studies the ecology of human landscapes to inform sustainable stewardship of the biosphere. He teaches environmental science and landscape ecology, which he has also taught at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He is a Visiting Fellow at Oxford’s Martin School, Lead Author of the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment, Fellow of the Global Land
Programme, Senior Fellow of the Breakthrough Institute, and former member of the Anthropocene Working Group. His book, Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction, was published in 2018.