“In order to address the biodiversity crisis, we are going to need to find ways to cooperate across political boundaries and across international boundaries”

After receiving the 14th BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology, Simon Levin analyzes in this interview how ecosystems function as complex systems in which millions of local interactions generate global patterns. Drawing on his work in theoretical ecology, he explains how the principles of mathematics and systems dynamics help us understand biodiversity, ecological stability, and the sustainable management of natural resources. His reflections highlight the importance of integrating science, modeling, and public policy to address current environmental challenges.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology has gone in this fourteenth edition to the ecologists Lenore Fahrig, Simon Levin and Steward Pickett for incorporating the spatial dimension into ecosystem research, in the sense of landscape and its multiple scales, and bringing it to bear in the management of “coupled human-natural systems,” in the words of the citation.