Indiana University environmental anthropologist Eduardo Brondizio was awarded the 2025 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement for his work on human-environment interaction in the Amazon and global-level work linking biodiversity to humankind. He is sharing the prize with Argentinian ecologist Sandra Díaz.
Established in the early 1970s, the Tyler Prize was the first of its kind to recognize global leaders in the environment and sustainability. Often called the "Nobel Prize for the environment," the Tyler Prize has been awarded to scientists, policymakers and thought leaders whose work has advanced environmental science, conservation and sustainability across the world.
"Eduardo Brondizio's research has illuminated the vital role of Indigenous peoples and local communities in conservation," said Julia Marton-Lefèvre, chair of the Tyler Prize jury.
Brondizio, a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology in the IU College of Arts and Sciences, has dedicated nearly four decades to researching the Amazon. He has studied the region from the ground up to understand its landscape transformation, its commodity markets and their impact on the lives of rural, indigenous and urban communities.
His work connects large-scale structural processes, like national policies and climate change, to the livelihoods and decisions of households and communities across the region. Much of his work has been done in partnership with long-term collaborator and wife Andrea Siqueira, a senior lecturer in the IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies and adjunct faculty in the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences.
"Eduardo Brondizio's research on the Amazon has transformed our knowledge of the region and the socio-ecological issues affecting the area and its people," IU President Pamela Whitten said. "This recognition demonstrates the significant impact of his applied and translational research on a global scale, and it's a privilege for Indiana University to have one of our very own awarded such a distinguished international accolade."
Over the span of his career, his work has examined the transformation of Amazonian landscapes, deforestation, territorial governance, migration and rural-urban networks, land-use change, and more. He has engaged with and learned from local community organizations, farmers and cooperatives to understand the impact of certain policies and climate changes on their lives and how their responses contribute solutions to the region's predicaments.
"The region is at the center of the global conversation on climate change," Brondizio said. "Through collaborative work, we are contributing to make visible the transformations of the Amazon through the perspectives of people living there. We must make their perspectives, contributions and struggles visible in this conversation."
Brondizio's collaborative and community-engaged research aims to bring attention to lesser-known issues affecting Amazonia. His work has shed light on how accelerated urban expansion affected urban, rural and indigenous populations. He's also illuminated the successes they've had in protecting critical areas and developing solutions for more sustainable and inclusive economies built upon local knowledge and the biodiversity of the region.
"Eduardo is a visionary, an outstanding multi-disciplinary scholar who has applied his research and expertise across a range of fields to pressing and complex problems that impact local communities, as well as the planet's biodiversity," said Rick Van Kooten, executive dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington. "Moreover, he is a dedicated teacher and mentor to his students, preparing them to take on these challenges as future leaders themselves."
At the global level, Brondizio's research has informed international intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations' UNESCO biosphere program and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. As a co-chair with Sandra Díaz and Josef Settele of the 2019 IPBES Global Assessment Report, Brondizio led the first global analyses to systematically qualify and quantify the relevance of indigenous and local communities' contributions to biodiversity conservation, management and restoration from local to global levels. The report was a foundational document for the U.N.'s Convention on Biological Diversity global biodiversity framework, which sets targets for halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030.
At IU, Brondizio collaborates with faculty and students across campus on environmental governance and sustainability issues. He is the director of the Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes, a College of Arts and Sciences research and teaching center for interdisciplinary collaboration on all dimensions of human-environment interaction. He is also a senior research fellow of the Ostrom Workshop and affiliated faculty with the Department of Geography, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, the Environmental Resilience Institute, and the Integrated Program in the Environment.
Brondizio curated the exhibition "Locally based, globally relevant: Indigenous and local knowledge, values and practices for nature," currently open at the IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. This is his third museum exhibit at IU aiming to extend research to the larger public.
In 2023, Brondizio was awarded the Volvo Environment Prize, an award recognizing scientific contributions to sustainability.
He will receive the Tyler Prize at the University of Southern California on April 10.
