Toby Gardner

Toby Gardner is a Senior Research Fellow at SEI, where he co-leads SEI’s Initiative on Producer to Consumer Sustainability and the Transparency for Sustainable Economies platform (Trase). He joined SEI in January 2014.

He has 15 years’ experience in science and science-policy issues in human-modified landscapes across the tropics, with a strong emphasis on the management and conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in multiple-use agriculture-forestry landscapes, and the challenges of balancing environmental concerns and rural development priorities. He is involved in a number of international environmental policy processes including as a Coordinating Lead Author and Liaison Expert for the global assessment on Land Degradation and Restoration of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Before joining SEI, he was a research fellow at the University of Cambridge for five years, and helped found and coordinate the Sustainable Amazon Network. He is an affiliated researcher at the International Institute for Sustainability (Rio de Janeiro). He has previously led research projects in Belize, Tanzania, and in Caribbean coral reef ecosystems.

He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, including a reference book on the monitoring and management of biodiversity in forest ecosystems (Earthscan, 2010). In 2012, he was awarded the biannual British Ecological Society’s Founders’ Prize for significant contributions to the science of ecology.

He holds degrees from the University of Edinburgh (BSc, 2001) and the University of East Anglia (MSc, 2001; PhD, 2007).

Publications authored externally to SEI

Books

• Gardner, T.A., (2010). Monitoring Forest Biodiversity: improving conservation through ecologically responsible management. Earthscan, London.

Edited books

• Peres, C.A., Barlow, J., Gardner, T.A., and Vieira, I.C.G., eds. (2013). Conservação da biodiversidade em paisagens florestais antropizadas do Brasil. Fundação O Boticário / Editora da Universidade Federal do Paraná. In Portuguese.

Peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters (selected)

• Gardner, T. A., Von Hase, A., Brownlie, S., Ekstrom, J. M. M., Pilgrim, J. D., et al. (2013). Biodiversity Offsets and the Challenge of Achieving No Net Loss. Conservation Biology, 27(6). 1254–64. DOI:10.1111/cobi.12118.
• Gardner, T.A. (2013). The Amazon in transition: the challenge of transforming the world’s largest tropical forest biome into a sustainable social-ecological system. In Addressing Tipping Points. O’Riordan, T., Lenton, T., and Christie, I., eds. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Pullin, A.S., Sutherland, W., Gardner, T.A., Kapos, V., and Fa, J.E. (2013). Conservation priorities: identifying need, taking action and evaluating success. in Key Topics in Conservation 2. MacDonald, D. and K. Willis, eds. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Gardner, T. A., Ferreira, J., Barlow, J., Lees, A. C., Parry, L., and 95 collaborators of the Sustainable Amazon Network (2013). A social and ecological assessment of tropical land uses at multiple scales: the Sustainable Amazon Network. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 368(1619). 20120166. DOI:10.1098/rstb.2012.0166.
• Pilgrim, J. D., Brownlie, S., Ekstrom, J. M. M., Gardner, T. A., von Hase, A., et al. (2013). A process for assessing the offsetability of biodiversity impacts. Conservation Letters, 6(5). 376–84. DOI:10.1111/conl.12002.
• Gardner, T.A., Burgess, N.D., Aguiar-Amuschastegui, N., Barlow, J., Berenguer, E., et al. (2012). A framework for integrating biodiversity concerns into national REDD+ programmes. Biological Conservation, 154, 61-71. DOI:10.1016/j.biocon.2011.11.018. Distributed as an official Information Document in English, French and Spanish to parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
• Barlow, J., Gardner, T.A., Lees, A., Parry, L., and Peres, C.A. (2012). How pristine are tropical forests? An ecological perspective on the pre-Columbian human footprint in Amazonia and implications for contemporary conservation. Biological Conservation, 151, 45-49. DOI:10.1016/j.biocon.2011.10.013.
• Kapos, V., Kurz, W. and Gardner, T.A. (coordinating lead authors), et al. (2012). Impacts of forest and land management on biodiversity and carbon. In Understanding relationships between biodiversity, carbon, forests and people: the key to achieving REDD+ objectives, Parrotta, J.A., Wildburger, C., and Mansourian, S., eds., 53-82. A Global Assessment Report. Prepared by the Global Forest Expert Panel on Biodiversity, Forest Management, and REDD+. IUFRO World Series, Volume 31. Vienna. 161 pp.
• Gibson, L., Lee, M.L., Koh, L.P., Brook, B.W., Gardner, T.A., et al. (2011). Primary forests are irreplaceable for sustaining tropical biodiversity. Nature, 478, 378-381. DOI:10.1038/nature10425.
• Barlow, J., Ewers, R., Anderson, L., Aragao, L.E.O.C., Baker, T.R., Boyd, E., Feldpausch, T.R., Gloor, E., Hall, A., Malhi, Y., Milliken, W., Mulligan, M., Parry, L., Pennington, T., Peres, C.A., Phillips, O.L., Roman-Cuesta, R.M., Tobias, J.A. and Gardner, T.A. (2011). Using learning networks to understand complex systems: A case study of biological, geophysical and social research in the Amazon. Biological Reviews, 86(2), 257-474. DOI:10.1111/j.1469-185X.2010.00155.x.
• Pardini, R., Bueno, A.d.A., Gardner, T.A., Prado, P.I., Metzger, J.P., (2010). Beyond the fragmentation threshold hypothesis: regime shifts in biodiversity across fragmented landscapes. PLoS One, 5, e13666. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0013666.
• Gardner, T.A., Barlow, J., Sodhi, N.S., Peres, C.A., (2010). A multi-region assessment of tropical forest biodiversity in a human-modified world. Biological Conservation, 143(10), 2293-2300. DOI:10.1016/j.biocon.2010.05.017. Editorial of Special Issue on biodiversity in human-modified tropical forest landscapes.
• Barlow, J., Gardner, T. A., Louzada, J. and Peres, C. A. (2010) Measuring the conservation value of tropical primary forests: The effect of occasional species on estimates of biodiversity uniqueness. PLoS One, 5. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009609.
• Peres, C. A., Gardner, T.A., Barlow, J., Zuanon, J., Michalski, F., Lees, A. C., Vieira, I.C.G., Moreira, F.M.S. and Feeley, K.J. (2010) Biodiversity conservation in human-modified Amazonian forest landscapes. Biological Conservation, 143(10), 2314-2327. DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2010.01.021.
• Gardner, T.A., Barlow, J., Chazdon, R.L., Ewers, R., Harvey, C.A., Peres, C.A., Sodhi, N.S. (2009). Prospects for tropical forest biodiversity in a human-modified world. Ecology Letters, 12(6), 561-582. DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01294.x.
• Gardner, T.A., Barlow, J., Araujo, I.S., Avila-Pires, T.C.S., Bonaldo, A.B., et al. (2008). The cost-effectiveness of biodiversity surveys in tropical forests. Ecology Letters, 11(2), 139-150. DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01133.x.
• Gardner, T.A., Barlow, J., Parry, L.T.W., and Peres, C.A. (2007). Predicting the uncertain future of tropical forest species in a data vacuum. Biotropica, 39(1), 25-30. DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-7429.2006.00228.x.
• Gardner, T.A., Caro, T., Fitzherbert, E.B., Banda, T., and Lalbhai, P. (2007). Conservation value of multiple-use areas in East Africa. Conservation Biology, 21(6), 1516-1525. DOI:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2007.00794.x.
• Gardner, T.A., Barlow, J. and Peres, C.A. (2007). Paradox, presumption and pitfalls in conservation biology: consequences of habitat change for amphibians and reptiles. Biological Conservation, 131(1-2), 166-179.DOI:10.1016/j.biocon.2007.04.017.
• Barlow, J., Gardner, T.A., and 22 co-authors (2007). Quantifying the biodiversity value of tropical primary, secondary and plantation forests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(47), 18555-18560. DOI:10.1073/pnas.0703333104 .
• Gardner, T.A. (2006). Tree-grass coexistence in the Brazilian cerrado: demographic consequences of environmental instability. Journal of Biogeography, 33(3), 448-463. DOI:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2005.01420.x.
• Gardner, T.A., Gill, J.A., Grant, A., Watkinson, A.R., and Côté, I.M. (2005). Hurricanes and Caribbean coral reefs: immediate impacts, recovery trajectories and contribution to long-term decline. Ecology, 86, 174-184. DOI:10.1890/04-0141.
• Gardner, T.A., Côté, I.M. Gill, J.A., Grant, A. and Watkinson, A.R. (2003). Long-term region wide declines in Caribbean coral reefs. Science, 301(5635), 958-960. DOI:10.1126/science.1086050.