Gretchen C. Daily

A biologist and biogeographer, Daily is a researcher and professor of Environmental Science at Stanford University, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford, a senior member of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, among other institutions. She is also a co-founder and director of the Stanford Natural Capital Project, a global partnership that was founded in 2005 with the goal of promoting human well-being and environmental sustainability by incorporating the values of nature into decisions with far-reaching global influence. Daily’s main lines of research include countryside biogeography and the future dynamics of biodiversity change, the harmonisation of biodiversity conservation and agriculture, and the different mechanisms for integrating conservation and human development into major political and financial decisions. She is the author and co-author of more than two hundred scientific and popular articles and several books, including Natural Capital: Theory and Practice of Mapping Ecosystem Services (OUP Oxford, 2011), The Power of Trees (Trinity University Press, 2012) and Rural Livelihood and Environmental Sustainability in China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Daily has received numerous national and international awards in the area of environment, ecology and nature conservation, such as the International Cosmos Prize (2009), the Blue Planet Prize (2017) and the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (2020).