Editorials

Governments around the world are too slow and too weak in their commitments to stop deforestation. And promises of restoration will not make up for the loss of old forests.

There is a range of approaches to improving peer review, and at this journal we encourage many of them.

Ecologists are embracing the use of forestry data, offering the chance to move beyond decades of division between disciplines.

Environmental scientists can find themselves exposed to a range of mental health challenges, and we all need to support each other in addressing them.

We have recently rekindled our Books & Arts coverage.

We celebrate our fifth anniversary with a look back at publications that illustrate the breadth of our scope.

This month we celebrate plasmids as drivers of microbial ecology and evolution, and highlight active areas of research.

The climate and biodiversity crises are two sides of the same coin demanding urgent, ambitious action. Countries must commit to halve their carbon emissions and effectively protect 30% of land and oceans by 2030.

Expert elicitations are a research tool of growing importance, but more work is needed to ensure that the expert pool is truly diverse.

An update on our progress in anti-racist actions and confronting colonial science.

Ecological approaches to agriculture have a major role to play, alongside biotechnology.

A paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution has recently become the journal’s first retraction. We take the opportunity to reflect on a kinder and more open way of maintaining scientific rigour.

The ethical issues surrounding Burmese amber expose a tangle of problems within twenty-first century palaeontology, which has not fully reckoned with its genesis as a colonial science. This editorial accompanies an update to Nature Portfolio policy which takes a first step towards combatting parachute science in palaeontological, archaeological and geological fields.

A renewed focus on nature’s utility is intended to enhance biodiversity protection. To avoid undermining conservation goals, this must be accompanied by safeguards on resource extraction, as well as meaningful acknowledgement and integration of Indigenous knowledge.

We invite researchers to make use of our community site to disseminate their research and foster discussion.

The delay in final negotiations on the global post-2020 biodiversity framework is providing time for additional scientific evidence, and for strengthening ideas around natural capital.

The rise of SARS-CoV-2 variants with altered virus biology is bringing viral evolution into the public spotlight.

A potential breakthrough in our ability to predict protein structure from sequence could have a major impact on evolutionary biology.

We welcome the move to virtual being the default for scientific interactions.

A wealth of potential exists for citizen science to contribute to major ecological and societal challenges. We can all play a part by contributing to these projects, and encouraging our networks to do so too.