Pete Smith is Professor of Soils and Global Change at the Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland, UK) and Science Director of the Scottish Climate Change Centre of Expertise (ClimateXChange). His interests include climate change mitigation, soils, agriculture, food systems, ecosystem services and modelling. He has been an author on many reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and led its work of climate change mitigation in agriculture, forestry and land for its 4th and 5th Assessment Reports and led its work interlinkages between land-based mitigation options for the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, a Fellow of the Institute of Soil Scientists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, a Fellow of the European Science Academy, and a Fellow of the Royal Society (London).