On May 6,  2026 SEFS will welcome the Director of the Institute for Global Change Biology, Peter Reich, to the newly renovated Anderson Hall for our annual Sustaining Our World lecture series.

This year’s topic is Hope on a Changing Planet: Science, Democracy, Nature and Us

Lecture Summary

“In the past, it was enough of a challenge being a global change scientist trying to learn what we humans are doing to the planet’s climate and natural systems, and how we might use such information to support nature and better manage ecosystems for multiple purposes we humans care about. In my talk I will share that much of our hope in this realm involves finding and supporting the synergies between biodiversity, climate mitigation, social justice and economic vitality in the forests, grasslands, croplands and the waters that surround them. But now, we somehow must do all this while defending and promoting science, and working to save democracy.

Do I know how we can do that? No. But try we must. And perhaps we can learn from the lessons of ecology and evolution about the broader challenges facing society today? Mimicking natural ecosystems, complex systems science suggests that the amplification of social diversity—such as the expansion of free speech, viewpoint diversity, and dissenting opinions—should enhance a system’s capacity to adapt to new challenges. This could occur because ameliorating suppression increases the information available for decision-making (akin to an increase of functional diversity) and creates more flexible structures (analogous to an increase of structural diversity), jointly enhancing a system’s ability to handle unexpected shocks. Perhaps one could even interpret this as suggesting that ‘good’ will always win in the end?

This strand of my work is at step 1 of a 1,000 mile journey. Come join me as I convey my sorrow, share what is known about our interactions with nature, offer hope, and redirect my own scientific journey by tacking more firmly against the headwinds of the day.”

Peter Reich Bio

Reich is Director of the Institute for Global Change Biology and Filibert Roth Professor, University of Michigan; Distinguished McKnight and Regents Professor, University of Minnesota; and Distinguished Professor International, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University. He conducts global change research on plants, soils, and ecosystems. His work links fundamental physiology with community dynamics and ecosystem structure and function, from the cell to the globe, to better understand impacts of multiple global environmental challenges. This includes studying the effects on ecosystems of rising CO2, climate change and biodiversity loss. He uses long-term experiments, observations, big data and models in diverse ecosystems and at a range of scales. Reich helped pioneer the development of trait-based ecology and is active in building grass-roots scientific networks. He also helped launch the science education channel, MinuteEarth (>750 million views). At present he is engaged in trying learn how we can help society manage itself and its interactions with nature to sustain people and the planet.

Event RSVP and details coming soon.