Biome Stewardship Councils: Revisiting the Case for Sub-global, Democratic Ecosystem Governance

Global biodiversity loss is accelerating, with approximately one million species facing extinction and ecosystem degradation that compromises the welfare of over three billion people. While there is growing awareness and global consensus on biodiversity protection, nation-state governance alone cannot be counted on to address transborder species protection. This Comment revisits and updates the proposal for Biome Stewardship Councils: autonomously built, democratic, transboundary bodies organised around the world’s major biomes. Three developments since the original proposal make the case more urgent and more practically realisable: advances in Earth System Governance, Indigenous-led governance models, and biome-scale monitoring of ecosystem flows.