Another day, another climate crisis. Headlines warning of environmental catastrophe have become a daily fixture. It is not difficult to see why optimism is in short supply, especially after extreme heatwaves of 2026 left London’s parks parched, forests near Bordeaux ablaze and flash floods wiping away villages in Nepal.
But not everyone thinks that an ecological collapse is inevitable. British ecologist Tom Crowther is among the optimists.
In his debut book Nature’s Echo, the maverick scientist – often described as the “Steve Jobs of ecology” – draws on scientific research and encounters from the front lines of restoration to set out a plausible path for nature to recover while tackling the interconnected threats of climate change, biodiversity loss and economic inequality.
Crowther begins his account with a bleak warning: as much as half of
Earth’s ecosystems are on the brink. He explains how we got there through a deceptively simple concept of feedback loops.
Feedback loops shape the fate of complex natural systems, from forests
and food production to societies and global economies. For example, population growth could produce a self-reinforcing loop: more people produce more ideas and labour, supporting higher productivity and still larger populations. This is how humanity expanded its footprint from North Africa right across the planet.
Healthy ecosystems can absorb remarkable levels of disturbance, including those caused by humanity's expanding footprint. Forests, soil, wetlands and oceans recover from severe environmental damage through their interactions with different species, nutrient cycles and regeneration processes.
Yet no system is permanently stable. Even the most balanced system can tip into a new state when positive feedback loops start to spiral out of control. And that’s exactly what’s happening today.
“As the human swarm has expanded across the entire planet, so has our appetite – and our impact,” Crowther writes. “Once a new feedback loop is formed, it can be remarkably difficult to turn it around.”
Many of the feedback loops that once maintained ecological stability are now beginning to unravel, reaching what researchers call a negative tipping point, a critical boundary beyond which changes can often become sudden and irreversible. Amazon deforestation, changes in the Atlantic Ocean circulation and melting glaciers are among those identified by an international group of scientists.https://global-tipping-points.org/case-studies/
A box of matches
Once a tipping point is reached, critical ecological functions – including the provision of food and water, and the regulation of temperature and floods – can begin to fail.
Crowther estimates that seven in ten countries in the world have passed a tipping point where forest cover loss exceeds a critical threshold of 48%. Beyond this, agricultural yields may decline, disrupting food production and threatening national security.https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/7914/
One of the book’s most vivid examples is central Portugal, where hundreds of thousands of eucalyptus trees dominate a landscape once rich in oak, pine, laurel and chestnut trees. The eucalyptus trees – planted by timber companies to meet rising global demand for paper products – are now a major environmental hazard as they are far more flammable than the trees they displaced.
“We live in a box of matches,” a forest warden in the town of Pedrógão says.
According to Crowther, monocultures of this kind, where a single
dominant species replaces the natural diversity of flora and fauna, now cover around 75% of the planet's vegetated surface.
At this point, the book takes a darker turn: “The self-propelling nature
of this global loop seemed to have the potential to erode any sense of agency we might have in the process… Everywhere we look, we see signs of planetary-scale systems tipping into new states.”
“The recovery of ecosystems does not come at the expense of the economy – quite the opposite. Under the right conditions, effective wealth distribution mechanisms can be powerful in tipping our societal feedback loops towards resilience.”
Breaking the loop
Yet Nature’s Echo also offers a blueprint for change. Crowther proposes
ways to break the negative ecological feedback loops, which he says are deeply rooted in our economy and society, and to kickstart recovery efforts.
Through his work as an academic and founder of Restor – a platform he and his team developed in partnership with Google to provide site-level ecological insights – Crowther emphasises the need to remove obstacles so that positive natural shifts can start building momentum.https://am.pictet.com/ch/en/mega/2024/tom-crowther-biodiversity-monitoring
In many cases, the biggest barriers are social. Rural poverty, lack of
access to finance and pressure to service external debt incentivise local communities and governments to use their forests, fisheries, land and mineral reserves for maximum commercial gain.
These pressures are often self-reinforcing. The more natural resources communities exploit to meet immediate economic needs, the greater the strain on ecosystems, reducing long-term productivity and deepening dependence on further extraction. Breaking these cycles and moving towards more sustainable and regenerative practices is as much a social challenge as an environmental one.
“In the end, feedback loops don’t just exist in ecosystems; they shape how our ideas, attitudes and values move through society,” Crowther writes.
There are, he says, plenty of positive examples.
Take Costa Rica. Just a few decades ago, this small Central American
nation stood on the brink of an ecological collapse, having converted its dense forests to pastures to grow crops and raise cattle, and thus slashed its tropical forest cover to just 25% from 75%.
Alarmed by this, the government changed course in the 1980s and kicked off nationwide restoration efforts. It used an innovative Payments for Environmental Services (PES) programme to incentivise farmers to protect water sources, conserve biodiversity and mitigate carbon emissions.
The programme marked a striking turning point. Farmers gained financial stability. Forest cover recovered to 55-60%. But the impact reached far wider than them. “The economy has shifted away from cattle, coffee and bananas and towards ecotourism and high-tech goods and services… rural incomes from nature-based industries have risen sharply,” Crowther writes.
Costa Rica has inspired similar schemes worldwide. A recent review recorded more than 550 PES programmes, together distributing USD 36-42 billion per year.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323702193_The_global_status_and_trends_of_Payments_for_Ecosystem_Services
Similarly, Crowther notes that innovative fixed income instruments trialled in countries like Seychelles and Belize can deliver a positive impact, relieving financial pressure while directing capital towards conservation and local livelihoods. For example, debt for nature swaps reduce debt service costs in exchange for conservation commitments, while blue bonds raise funding for marine protection often on more favourable financing terms.
“The recovery of ecosystems does not come at the expense of the economy – quite the opposite,” he writes. “Under the right conditions, effective wealth distribution mechanisms can be powerful in tipping our societal feedback loops towards resilience.”
Towards positive tipping points
Throughout the book, Crowther stresses that feedback loops are self-reinforcing, whether the effect is positive or negative. So when countries like Costa Rica, or businesses and investors, take steps to build positive loops, the effects can snowball.
Crowther cites research from American anthropologist Erle Ellis to challenge the idea that human activity is an impediment to ecological revival.
The research shows humans have been transforming ecosystems for at least 12,000 years, including through the activities of relatively small populations of hunter-gatherers and early farmers. Landscapes can also recover, particularly when social systems change, pressure on land eases and natural regeneration is allowed to proceed.https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023483118
There are already tentative signs of this shift. Take agriculture, the leading cause of land-use change and deforestation. Recent innovations such as precision farming, drought- and pest-resistant crops, and smart irrigation systems have cut waste and improved yields, halving agricultural land-use per person and boosting food supply in every region of the world.https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-productivity-crucial
Global deforestation also appears to have peaked. The average net loss
in the world's forests halved in the last decade from the 1980 peak of over 100 million hectares. While the number is still high, it is a step in the right direction.https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation
“Breakthroughs in each industry create opportunities for progress in others, creating feedback loops that accelerate the global shift toward efficiency,” Crowther writes.
“Human innovation has always worked to overcome the ecological limitations ahead of us. Just like the changes to our climate, these technological and regenerative transformations are driven by feedback loops that can reach an astronomical scale. Sustainability is fast becoming the cheapest and most logical choice for individuals, companies and governments.”
Nature’s Echo provides an inspiring vision of what is possible, with examples of how positive feedback loops can take hold. Yet readers may be left wanting more details on the social, financial and commercial forces that could help regenerative practices gain momentum within the current economic system, particularly in an increasingly polarised political climate. Perhaps that reflects the scale of the challenge.
Even so, Crowther leaves readers with a sense of optimism. “Nature will recover if we allow it to,” he writes. “The loops we set in motion can echo long after we are gone.”
Investment insights
By Gabriel Micheli, senior investment manager of Pictet ReGeneration strategy, Pictet Asset Management
-
2026 was the year when the economic cost of extreme weather and environmental degradation became impossible to ignore. The recent wildfires in Southern France, for example, are estimated to have affected 40,000 businesses for a total loss of up to EUR 15 billion.
-
Some environmental solutions have reached a tipping point, benefiting from positive feedback loops that drive down costs and encourage wider adoption. For example, renewable energy and batteries are now the cleanest and cheapest options to produce power in many parts of the world. The same could happen with regenerative agriculture. Opportunities to allocate capital to such efforts are rapidly emerging, offering investors the potential to achieve both financial and environmental goals.
-
We invest in companies that help regenerate ecosystems and create more resilient societies. These companies, operating in industries such as industrial efficiency, simulation software, waste collection and treatment, renewables and regenerative agriculture, are forecast to grow their annual sales by 14% on average.Bloomberg, 2026 based on consensus forecasts for the next 3 years
