Tom Crowther

Thomas Ward Crowther is a British ecologist, focussed on understanding the forces that shape biodiversity at a global scale.

He is the Founding Scientific Chair of the BRANCH institute, an international network of leading university research groups across five countries exploring the role of biodiversity in regulating the Earth’s climate and human wellbeing. In 2020 he founded Restor.eco, an online platform that supports hundreds of thousands of community-led restoration projects around the world. By democratizing access to data and financing, this platform facilitates local biodiversity protection initiatives to enhance the wellbeing of local people. Collectively, this global network of projects is supporting the recovery of healthy soils and vegetation across 160 million hectares of land.

Crowther was the founding co-chair of the Advisory Board for the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which aims to facilitate ecological recovery at a global scale, and in 2021, the World Economic Forum named Crowther a Young Global Leader for his efforts to protect biodiversity across the globe.

He was a finalist in Prince William’s earthshot prize, and the world economic forum recognized him as a young global leader for his contributions to global nature conservation.