Welcome to Predirections
Future-focused writing on biodiversity, climate, and water — by Prof. Jonathan Tonkin.
🌍 What you’ll get from this newsletter
Timely, science-based insights into the intersecting challenges of biodiversity loss, climate change, and water management — and the solutions that matter most1.
As a working scientist, I write for readers who want more than the doom narrative. This newsletter is about understanding what’s coming — and acting on it.
You’ll get:
Fresh takes on key research and new policy directions
Behind-the-scenes stories from a solutions-focused research lab
Deep dives on biodiversity, climate, water, and how we adapt
Practical, global-to-local insights for people who care about the future
Occasional personal reflections as a father and scientist living these questions
🌱 It’s for the curious, the concerned, and the people trying to make a difference.
For a good place to start and find an index of some of my and my readers’ favourite posts, go here.
📓 Nexus Notes — a fortnightly roundup
I also write a series called Nexus Notes — a twice-monthly collection of things that caught my attention: ideas I’m exploring, articles worth reading, and threads that connect to the bigger picture of climate, biodiversity, and water. It’s part reading list, part reflection — designed to spark curiosity and help us think differently about the challenges ahead.
🔓 Why go paid?
I spend dozens of hours each month crafting these posts. Paid subscriptions make this work possible — and help keep the main newsletter free for everyone.
Paid members get:
Bonus posts, deeper dives that go beyond the public essays, and early access experimental formats
AMAs, supporter-only discussions, and the ability to start new threads in subscriber chat
You’re helping keep independent, expert-led writing alive — and free to read
☕ For the cost of a coffee a month, you help build a better-informed response to the biodiversity–climate crisis, and you help to keep this work going.
👋 Who am I?
I’m Jonathan Tonkin (Jono for short) — an ecologist and biodiversity scientist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, where I’m a Professor and Rutherford Discovery Fellow.
My research has spanned continents and ecosystems, but I’ve always returned to one core question:
How do we predict and adapt to environmental change in a way that supports life — all life?
I’ve spent much of my career documenting biodiversity loss, especially in freshwater ecosystems. Now, I’m pivoting toward solutions: redirecting effort, exploring policy levers, and amplifying the science that can help us adapt. After publishing 100 peer-reviewed papers — including in Nature and Science — I want to share what I’ve learned beyond academia: translating the latest science into plain language, before it even reaches the headlines, to inform, inspire, and equip a wider community.
I'm also a parent of two young kids. That perspective shapes everything I write.
You can learn more about my research and lab at tonkinlab.org — we focus on biodiversity science for a changing world.
🏆 Recently, I was honoured with the New Zealand Prime Minister’s MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize.
I’m also over on Bluesky and LinkedIn if you want to connect there too.
📬 Never miss a post
Subscribe free to get every new edition in your inbox. Or upgrade to paid to support independent, scientist-led writing on biodiversity, climate, and water — it’s the best way to make this work sustainable.
Be sure to check out the archive for older posts.
🙏 See what paid supporters are saying
💬 You can also join an active chat
PS: Why the name?
It’s a bit of a play on words. My background is in ecology and biodiversity science, with a special focus on freshwater ecosystems. The name combines many of my interests and the theme of this blog: prediction and anticipation of future change, redirection of effort and resources, adaptation of future policy and management to unknown environmental threats, and, more generally, solutions to the joint biodiversity loss-climate change challenge.
