Gerald Marten is an ecologist with more than sixty years of research experience in a variety of ecosystems around the world. He has lived and worked in the United States and Canada, Mexico and Central America, East Africa, Southeast Asia, and Japan. His innate love of nature, enriched by growing up in Southern California’s Santa Monica Mountains, kindled a scientific passion to explore how nature works. As his work progressed, it focused increasingly on practical ecological problems, and so did his commitment to translating science so people and communities can make good use of it.
Author of Human Ecology: Basic Concepts for Sustainable Development (Earthscan Publications, 2001) and Traditional Agriculture in Southeast Asia: A Human Ecology Perspective (Westview Press, 1986), he has published approximately one hundred scientific articles, many of them on practical concerns such as fisheries and forest management, tropical agriculture and land use, alternative energy, ecological mosquito control, and how people can live sustainably on this planet.
Gerry began the EcoTipping Points project to discover how lessons from environmental success stories can point the way to making a better world for his five grandchildren and all the rest of us.