State of the Worlds Plants and Fungi 2026
Our sixth report in the State of the World’s series launched on 16 June. Subtitled ‘The Digital Biodiversity Revolution’, it reveals the state of global biodiversity and explores how digital tools are now transforming our ability to understand and respond to the climate and biodiversity crises, expose critical gaps in scientific knowledge, and highlight where action is most urgently needed to safeguard plants and fungi.
It is the third report that is accompanied by a full volume of expert-reviewed scientific publications from our partners, the New Phytologist Foundation. Their special collection on ‘Harnessing the Benefits of Specimen Digitisation' includes 52 open-access papers published in the journals New Phytologist and Plants, People, Planet.
Drawing upon the expertise of more than 400 experts from more than 170 institutions across 40 countries the report represents a global collaborative effort and includes quotes from many of the scientists involved in the work. The eleven chapters take an in-depth look at how technology can be nature’s ally, provides new insights into extinction risk, and identifies critical knowledge gaps and complexities as we move through this digital age and how to address them.
We present compelling stories of what we can learn from new sources of data and how these learnings can help us foster future research and conservation.
