RE:storing Ecosystems
Healthy ecosystems provide humans with everything we need to live: clean air and water, healthy soils, a regulated climate, and disease control - to name only a few.
When ecosystems are under stress, however, the services they provide weaken, throwing off the delicate balance of our planet. From the soils that give us food to the wetlands that store carbon, we need the world's habitats to thrive.
Through interviews, case study films, and reports from organisations on the frontline, explore how nature can inspire solutions to many of the challenges we face today. Innovations in agriculture, landscape management, and biodiversity conservation are helping breathe life back into our precious ecosystems.
Rediscovering Nature-Based Solutions
Nature-based solutions are synergistic projects between humans and nature. They are based on the knowledge that healthy ecosystems provide humans with myriad services, such as flood control and pollination. When we work with nature and restore biodiversity, we help the planet, but we also help ourselves. Effective nature-based solutions benefit local communities and honour indigenous practices. Nathalie Seddon is Professor of Biodiversity and Founding Director of the Nature-based Solutions Initiative in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford.
Forests
Encouraging both biodiversity and economic growth
Reviving Marine Biodiversity
Our oceans are reaching a tipping-point. Increased sea temperatures, ocean acidification, and sea level rises are having a profound effect on marine eco-systems and the planet as a whole. Professor David Booth outlines how climate change is affecting the health of our oceans, and what we can do to prevent an ecological disaster.
David Booth is Professor of Marine Ecology and Director of the Centre for Environmental Sustainability at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.
Coastal Habitats
Innovative projects regenerating diverse ecosystems
Mapping Conservation
Thomas Crowther is professor of ecology in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich, where he founded the Crowther Lab. He is also the founder of Restor, an online restoration and conservation platform, and co-chair of the advisory board for the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
Biodiversity
Preserving and enhancing Earth's genetic diversity
Transforming Food Systems
Patrick Holden, founder of the Sustainable Food Trust and a dairy farmer in West Wales, shares his vision of how regenerative agriculture could make farming climate positive; reducing greenhouse gas emissions, restoring depleted land, capturing carbon, improving biodiversity, at the same time as transforming public health.
Agriculture
Protecting ecosystems through nature-positive farming practices
Further reading
Reports from the SMI and its members
