Royal Society Environment Prize Lecture by Professor Andrew Balmford FRS

The Royal Society Environment Medal and Lecture 2025 is awarded to Professor Andrew Balmford FRS for groundbreaking contributions to conservation science, having built transformative partnerships and redefining the landscape of conservation education.

Food production does more damage to wild species than any other sector of human activity, yet how best to limit its growing impact is greatly contested. Looking first at recent progress in encouraging less damaging diets and trying to cut food loss and waste, Professor Balmford will conclude that both are essential but far from sufficient. On the production side, field studies from five continents quantifying the impacts of different farming systems on almost 2000 individually-assessed species reveals, perhaps surprisingly, that land-sparing – adopting high-yield farming to in order make space nearby for natural habitats – consistently outperforms approaches focused on retaining wildlife within farms. Sparing also offers considerable potential for mitigating climate change. But delivering land sparing raises important challenges—in particular, identifying and promoting sustainable higher-yielding farm methods that are less environmentally harmful than current industrial agriculture, and devising mechanisms which ensure yield gains also deliver habitat conservation. These findings challenge current conservation orthodoxy but suggest that without novel collaborations between conservation and the agriculture sector we will not succeed in bending the curve of biodiversity loss.

Andrew Balmford is Professor of Conservation Science in the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, where his research focuses on how to reconcile biodiversity conservation with meeting human food needs and other land-demanding activities, on the effectiveness of conservation actions, and on the costs and benefits of retaining intact ecosystems. He collaborates closely with conservation practitioners and with colleagues in other disciplines including economics, agriculture and psychology.

Andrew helped establish the Student Conference on Conservation Science, the Cambridge Conservation Forum, Earth Optimism and the Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits. In his book ‘Wild Hope’ - which has since inspired a TV series - he argues that cautious, evidence-based optimism is vital in tackling environmental challenges. Andrew was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2011.

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• This lecture can be attended in-person at the Royal Society
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