Tom Pliske

For the past fifty years, Thomas Pliske has been a university professor of Biology, primarily at Florida International University in Miami. He is a founding member of FIU’s Environmental Studies Program and has taught undergraduate environmental studies courses such as sustainability, deep ecology, energy resources, ecology of south Florida and environmental education.

He has conducted ecological research in Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guyana, Panama and Ecuador working with local indigenous peoples and published numerous scientific articles and reviews. In the 1980s, he was a project developer and negotiator in Costa Rica and Honduras for the university’s International Affairs Office and was sponsored by UNEP to report the progress of these initiatives at a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. From 2015 to 2018, he taught studies abroad in Costa Rica on the themes of environmental conservation and sustainability.

Recently, he has taken an active role in global environmental issues and currently is an adviser to FIU’s Global Indigenous Forum and Science Adviser to the Spirituality and Sustainability Global Network. He was an invited presenter at the Assisi Spirituality and Sustainability Conferences in Italy 2011 and 2018. 

His two recent books, Light, Truth and Nature in 2017 and A Himalayan Hope and a Himalayan Promise in 2019 focus on exploring the role of humanity in global ecosystems from the viewpoints of major spiritual traditions – East, West, and Indigenous. His 2023 fiction book, Sunlight Stories & Moonlight Tales, tells stories and tales of characters who, following their hearts, understand that becoming more is better than having more, and self-giving is more rewarding than self-interest.