Visiting fellow with the Oxford Martin School, Professor Sandra Díaz, is to be awarded the 2025 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement for her work on understanding and addressing biodiversity loss and its impact on human societies.

Argentine ecologist Sandra Díaz was named a recipient of the prize alongside Brazilian-American anthropologist Eduardo Brondízio. They said they will use the win to draw attention to humanity’s 'entanglement' with nature in a joint call for policies, business models, and individuals to acknowledge their dependence and shared responsibility in the 'fabric of life.'

In a joint statement, they added:

'The climatic crisis, the biodiversity crisis, and the outrageous socioeconomic inequities in the world are all interrelated, all connected by the living fabric of the planet. They need to be tackled in an integrated manner. One cannot solve one of these crises without considering the other two.

'Solutions to them can enhance and synergize each other, while narrow-minded or short-sighted solutions to one of them can harm the others. Socio-environmental justice and respect for our connections with other life on Earth should stop being abstract concepts. They should be incorporated in policies, legislation, and initiatives from the public, civil society, and private sectors.'

Professor Díaz, at the cutting edge of the interactions between biodiversity and humankind, is calling for respect for nature and its vital contributions to people to be embedded in all sectors of legislation and the economy. She also calls for an end to huge subsidies and financial incentives for activities that harm human and non-human life.

'Our links with other organisms on Earth, and with other humans through such organisms, are not something abstract and homogenous,' she said.

'They are biologically, economically, culturally intricate. Trying to combine hard-core fundamental ecology with the categories of the social sciences and humanities to approach them has been a wonderfully enriching journey, although exhausting from time to time.'

'Sandra Díaz's work has been instrumental in reshaping how biodiversity is conceptualised and valued in policy discussions around the globe,' said Julia Marton-Lefèvre, chair of the Tyler Prize.

The first individuals from South America to receive the Tyler Prize, professors Díaz and Brondízio worked together on the Global Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services (IPBES), released in 2019, as well as the United Nations’ Convention on Biodiversity.

Professor Díaz is also Visiting Fellow with the Oxford Martin Programme on Biodiversity and Society.