There is an invisible line connecting the holm oak forests of the Castanya valley, in Montseny, with the offices of Canberra and the UN climate summits. This line is the trajectory of Pep Canadell (Sabadell, 1961). Trained at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) under the tutelage of Jaume Terradas –a direct disciple of Ramon Margalef himself–, he has dedicated his life to building an international scientific alliance capable of putting indisputable figures to the CO₂ that we dump on Earth. After an extreme summer that has once again melted thermometers in Europe, the scientist speaks to ARA from Australia, via video call. Despite being a world authority on climate, he keeps the spirit of that field student intact: he speaks plainly, avoids arrogance, and never tires of reminding us that the Earth is not an inert machine, but a living organism that is beginning to show signs of exhaustion. He has just been recognized with the 22nd Ramon Margalef Award in Ecology 2026, which is awarded annually by the Government of Catalonia.

When he was six years old, his parents sent him to live with his grandparents in Punjab for a year, hoping he would understand his Indian roots. That experience profoundly marked him. It was nothing like his native Essex, in the United Kingdom, which was much grayer and more industrial, and it instilled in Yadvinder Malhi (High Wycombe, UK, 1968) an admiration, curiosity, and passion for nature. Today, this professor of ecosystem science at the University of Oxford is one of the world's most recognized scientific voices in the integration of ecosystem ecology into Earth sciences. His work on climate change and biodiversity loss, especially in tropical forests, has been fundamental. For this reason, he was awarded the 21st Ramon Margalef Prize for Ecology 2025, granted by the Government of Catalonia.