Thomas Crowther

Thomas Crowther is an ecologist studying the connections between biodiversity and climate change. He is a professor in the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich, chair of the advisory council for the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and founder of Restor, an online platform for the global restoration movement. In 2021, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader for his work on the protection and restoration of biodiversity.

At ETH Zurich, he started Crowther Lab, an interdisciplinary group of scientists exploring how global-scale ecological systems interact to regulate the climate, which also collects data to inform best practices for ecosystem-specific restoration efforts. In 2020, the lab was appointed as scientific advisor to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a global initiative highlighting the need for greatly increased global cooperation to restore degraded and destroyed ecosystems.

Crowther’s landmark post-doctoral research inspired the World Economic Forum to announce its Trillion Trees initiative, 1T.org, which aims to conserve and restore one trillion trees globally within the decade. He serves on the advisory board of 1T.org. His research led to the development of Restor, a science-based open data platform that offers ecological insights, transparency, and connectivity to conservation and restoration projects world-wide. Launched as an independent not-for-profit organization, it was selected as a finalist for the Royal Foundation’s Earthshot Prize. The platform connects and supports more than 76,000 conservation and restoration projects worldwide.

After completing his Ph.D. at Cardiff University, Crowther received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Yale Climate and Energy Institute. In 2015, he was awarded a Marie Curie fellowship at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology at Wageningen University to research the impact of carbon cycle feedbacks on climate change.