Ecuador ranks ninth among the world’s megadiverse countries and is home to approximately 16,500 to 20,000 vascular plant species, 465 mammal species and 690 amphibian species.
Human beings have been telling stories for as long as there have been languages to tell them in. We think in stories, we remember in stories, and we turn just about everything that we experience into a story. Stories provide us with frameworks for understanding the complex events that we go through, helping us make sense of the world around us.
Because stories are so powerful, some say that the dual crises of biodiversity loss and climate change desperately need storytellers. It’s been suggested that scientists should rely less on formal papers to report on their crucial projects and study results and experiment more with creative ways of spreading the news about their work to inspire more actions to protect the natural world.
The stories surrounding Ecuador’s Rights of Nature statute are a case in point. One new investigation highlights the transformative potential of championing the Rights of Nature, which views Nature as a rights-bearing entity and not merely as an object of regulation and subjugation by extractive industries. The Llurimagua case—a dispute over a mining concession in Ecuador’s cloud forest—illustrates this approach, providing a unique opportunity for laypeople to share thoughts and expound on the governance of Earth systems. And in the Coral Triangle, a vital marine region spanning six countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste) and renowned for having the greatest marine biodiversity on the planet, a new, detailed and engaging evolutionary history reconstructs how the vast array of life in the region has developed over the past 40 million years.
Ecuador’s cloud forests are unique, high-altitude ecosystems characterized by dense, misty vegetation and notable for their amounts of humidity and rainfall. These forests host a vast array of animal and plant species, including many unique to the region.
Science tales: storytellers are needed
Scientists primarily publish their work in academic journals, where writing is expected to be dispassionate, objective and technical, making it unlikely to appeal to—or be easily understood by—nonexperts.
Now, researchers from England’s University of Exeter are arguing for science that’s “translated into stories,” with benefits for both scientists and the wider society. They suggest ways that scientists can tell powerful, passionate stories without compromising the objectivity of science.
For some time, environmental researchers have reported feeling frustration and a sense of fear, loss and sometimes helplessness at the lack of action to protect the planet. Scientists, however, are expected to be rational—not emotional—and removed from their subjects so as not to be seen as less objective and trustworthy. That prevents them from using their creative skills and passion to fully communicate their knowledge.
Some say scientists need to be more creative in their communication methods. They all have stories to tell about themselves, the people they work with and the places they work in; and those stories could be vitally important.
The current method of academic writing emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries, with “gentleman scientists” writing for each other. That form of writing had its place, but today we’re not only debating the technical aspects of science for academic interest. Currently, everyone in the world should be interested in the critical issues of our time, such as climate change and the biodiversity crisis, because we’re talking about our ability to continue living on Earth. That subject is too important to be confined to academic journals.
In their paper, which appears in the April 2025 issue of the science journal People and Nature, the University of Exeter researchers propose more appealing ways to communicate environmental science, including embracing the art of storytelling, with platforms for publication alongside traditional scientific writing. They also argue that scientists should share the “hidden” side of their work: how things are done behind the scenes (as in nature documentaries, such as the Into the Blue featurettes at the end of each episode of the series Blue Planet II).
They also encourage scientists to try new ways of “feeding science into normal human life”—for example, author biographies that go beyond factual CVs, enabling authors to share their motivations, personal stories and connections to their subjects.
Many scientists have deep and personal connections to their study subjects. In their author biographies, they could go beyond factual CVs and share their motivations for the research they’ve decided to conduct.
It’s obvious that existing methods of science communications haven’t worked, since the destruction of our climate and the natural world continues. We need to try something different, conclude the paper’s authors.
Novel topic: Mother Earth sues for mistreatment
If there was ever a David-and-Goliath science story, it’s the one of some frogs in Ecuador.
Ecuador ranks ninth among the world’s megadiverse countries, hosting significant species diversity, including approximately 16,500 to 20,000 vascular plant species, 465 mammal species and 690 amphibian species. Amphibians are crucial ecological indicators due to their heightened sensitivity to environmental pollutants and toxins, so frogs have become a powerful, tiny avatar of Earth’s health.
Almost 10% of the world’s known amphibians—such as this gliding tree frog—can be found within Ecuador’s compact terrain. Gliding tree frogs are native to northwestern Ecuador and are found in humid, lowland forests. Habitat loss is a primary threat to these frogs.
Although small, some particular frogs in Ecuador emerged victorious against a very large mining concession. Like most superheroes, these frogs had help from a team of strong allies. In this case, members of the Intag Valley’s Junin community—along with biologists, lawyers and others—successfully sued on Nature’s behalf to halt the mining activities. The “resistance rocket frog” (Rana cohete resistencia) was named by the people of Intag to symbolize their collective struggle to defend their territory.
Ecuador enshrined Rights of Nature within its constitution in 2008. Conventional environmental laws often focus on regulating human impacts through permits, limits and, in the best-case scenarios, restoration. In contrast, Rights of Nature laws establish Nature as having inherent rights and aim to holistically preserve entire ecosystems. For this reason, endemic endangered frog species and a human community can act as coequal plaintiffs.
To date, sustained community and legal efforts have successfully blocked three large mining projects in Intag, while the Rights of Nature have prevailed in half a dozen landmark court cases across Ecuador, as outlined in a paper titled “Frogs, Coalitions and Mining: Transformative Insights for Planetary Health and Earth System Law from Ecuador’s Struggle to Enforce Nature’s Rights” that appears in the journal Earth System Governance in April 2025.
Ecuador’s large-scale mining concessions are concentrated in the foothills of the Andes Mountains, overlapping regions with high amphibian endemism and richness. Turning constitutional Rights of Nature into conservation measures could prevent species extinctions in areas threatened by mining.
The paper describes three, critical dimensions of successful Rights of Nature laws:
1. They grant Nature intrinsic worth beyond utility to humans.
2. They act as guiding principles to ensure that laws, policies and rulings respect Nature.
3. They make the protection of Nature enforceable, obligating both citizens and the state.
Such Rights of Nature victories have inspired legal innovations globally. For example, Bolivia’s Mother Earth Law acknowledges the Rights of Nature within its legal framework. New Zealand has granted legal personhood to the Whanganui River and Te Urewera, the largest rain forest on the North Island. In Canada, legal recognition of the Rights of Nature has been granted in specific cases, such as the one involving the Grassy Narrows First Nation’s land rights. There are numerous, similar cases in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, India, Mexico and the United States.
History reconstruction: a biodiversity hot spot rises
The Coral Triangle, also known as the Indo-Australian Archipelago, is renowned for having the greatest marine biodiversity—including 76% of the world’s coral species—on our planet. Despite its importance, the detailed evolutionary history of this biodiversity hot spot has largely remained a mystery. Recently, an international research team shed light on this enigma, reconstructing how biodiversity in the region developed over the past 40 million years.
A reconstruction of the long-term history of the Coral Triangle helps us better understand why biodiversity here is much higher than in the Caribbean Sea: probably because the Coral Triangle didn’t experience a large extinction event.
The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Nature in June 2024, began their investigation by examining sediment samples from the Coral Triangle in the laboratory and identifying the fossils they contained. Their findings revealed that the archipelago had shown an increase in diversification since the early Miocene, around 20 million years ago. Interestingly, there were no major extinction events during the entire study period.
The story they created goes like this: A long time ago, during the Eocene (56 to 34 million years ago), excessively high tropical temperatures in warm climate zones hindered an increase in diversity. But around 14 million years ago, the region’s thermal stress, or excessive heat, began to moderate. The cooling that came after that allowed for a more favorable environment for biodiversity to flourish. Also around that time, tectonic collisions (movements of Earth’s plates) in Southeast Asia created extensive areas of shallow marine habitats.
It wasn’t until approximately 2.6 million years ago that the number of species approached a plateau. Today, the rich biodiversity that continues to exist could be at risk. The study’s palaeobiological results, state the authors, suggest that we could quickly lose the fantastic range of animals and plants in the Coral Triangle if the ongoing anthropogenic warming intensifies.
Stories can spark our imaginations and inspire us to believe in hopes and possibilities for the future. And in the environmental science realm, it seems to me, besides action what we need most is hope.
Nature narrative: stories inspire hope
Through time, humans have been inspired by stories. Storytelling is a fundamental part of human communication, connection, culture and even cognition. By telling better stories, scientists can help call us to meaningful actions that will safeguard us by protecting our environment.
Rights of Nature is a strong and emboldening story that started in Ecuador. It encourages us to see Nature not just as a resource, but as something alive and deserving of care—drawing on Indigenous wisdom and the idea of Pachamama, or “Mother Earth” in Quechua, a family of languages spoken by the Indian peoples of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru. The Coral Triangle’s tale is an origin story that connects us to our planet’s history and to each other.
Stories can spark our imaginations, cause us to believe in possibilities and instill hope for the future. And, it seems to me, besides actions, what we need most is hope.
Here’s to finding your true places and natural habitats,
Candy
