Sustainable adaptation and biomimicry for survival

Sustainable development can mean different things to different people.  Does it mean making sure that human civilisation can continue to expand indefinitely? Or that humans can indefinitely expand economic growth so that the nine billion forecast inhabitants of the planet by 2050 can be as rich as the top billion of today’s seven billion? Or that human population must mimic natural systems and become self-regulating in a steady-state relationship with the planet?

‘Sustainable’ clearly means indefinite maintenance of ‘development’, while development implies improvement to some better state.  This does not necessarily mean quantitative growth, but an increase in quality. Quality, of course, is itself a subjective term, but one simple definition is ‘fitness for purpose’. Evolution can be seen as ‘nature’s purpose’ within which the basic purpose of all species is survival and avoiding extinction. Basic survival is determined by natural selection which requires success in adapting to, or ‘being fit for’, survival in one’s environment. ‘Sustainable adaptation’ seems to be a better term than sustainable development. Development has too many associations with ‘growth’ that, at the current exponential rates, is rapidly exceeding the earth’s carrying capacity of both the products of human activity, and of human population.

Biological adaptation involves new combinations of genes that bring about innovation (mutagenesis) in the characteristics of the organism through the mechanism of mutation.  The equivalent process in human societies is innovation based on new ideas (or ‘memes’) that lead to adaptive change.  In biology only a small minority of mutations lead to successful sustainable adaptation and the majority of mutations (negative mutations) have maladaptive consequences in terms of fitness for survival. Other mutations are neutral and do not change the adaptive capacity of the organic system in relation to its external environment. Adaptation for survival has allowed the human species to flourish thanks to many successful innovations, but the exponential growth of human impact on the planet, to a large extent made possible by energy from fossil fuels, is now crossing planetary boundaries. The human innovations that have allowed the survival and rapid expansion of human population and its capacity to transform the planet and its resources are now themselves changing their status from the equivalent of positive to negative ‘mutations’. Put another way, beneficial ‘memes’ are now themselves transforming into negative maladaptive memes. This redefinition stems from unintended consequences of innovations that originally enhanced the material well-being of human societies, but now have resulted in ‘overshoot’ of planetary carrying capacity. The sources of the current socio-ecological predicament include: medical science; industrial chemically-based agriculture; the exploitation of coal, oil and natural gas; the replacement of natural ecosystems with managed ecosystems - all now driving exponential growth. They might now be considered as negative memes due to their unintended consequences that threaten the survival of many species, including our own.

Human creativity and innovation in the field of technology have fuelled economic growth, population expansion and impact on natural systems based on the assumption that exponential growth was unlimited.  The evolution of human societies cannot be infinite on a finite planet. In order to ensure survival, human innovations that develop human systems need to mimic the behaviour of natural systems that sustain themselves within the constraints of the nature and the planet’s carrying capacity. Biomimicry is an approach to design that mimics the natural forms, processes and ecosystems that have evolved over 3.8 billion years:

biomimicry is an innovation method that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies, e.g., a solar cell inspired by a leaf. The goal is to create products, processes, and policies—new ways of living—that are well-adapted to life on earth over the long haul. [http://biomimicry.net/about/biomimicry/a-biomimicry-primer/]

If human innovations are the equivalent of biological mutations in the process of adaptation, then they need to be tested against their capacity for sustainable adaptation, not simply in producing short-term benefits. The assessment of the risk of unintended consequences of releasing innovations into human systems and their possible effects on natural systems needs to become a high priority. At present, market economics places no such constraints upon the innovation that is central to the ‘creative destruction’ that drives the capitalist system. There is a growing movement towards a fundamental rethink of economics for ecological sustainability, for example, the New Economics Foundation, Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy and the World Economics Association. ‘Circular’ (as opposed to growth) economics, in which renewable resource use and recycling mimic nature’s steady state, are central to the ‘new economics’. But these advocates currently have little influence on political life.  As for education, if the accelerating human predicament is to be seriously addressed, then a critical stance should be encouraged to woolly notions about sustainable development. Human systems should be designed based on self-regulating nature systems and biomimicry. Sustainable adaptation of humans to the constraints of nature and planetary boundaries should replace 'creative destruction' that assumes that the earth has an unlimited carrying capacity for the fruits of human creativitiy .

Teaching the ‘big picture’ of human connectedness to nature

Thinking about the earth as a system of systems is far removed from the everyday experience of most people, whether young or old. For the young, the level of abstraction of such a concept is likely to require an unusual extension of their normal cognitive grasp. However the imaginative capacity of children is prodigious and it is often said that conventional schooling crushes out of them this capacity as they are tracked through a fragmented curriculum as they progress into secondary school and are subjected to the rigours of testing and exams that check their grasp of ‘school knowledge’. Over half of the earth’s human population now lives in urban centres.  Growing up in an urban environment separates children from nature despite the presence of parks and gardens. It also makes them less aware of the movement of the earth around the sun and of diurnal and seasonal rhythms as they are most of the time surrounded by the human-constructed environment and an electronic cocoon that, at least in the affluent countries, powers the gadgets and games that distract from direct contact with nature. These distractions limit the opportunity to develop a sense that we inhabit an orbiting planet which sustains us. They also work against an understanding that we are embedded in and sustained by a complex web of life that covers the earth’s surface and is powered by the sun.

So how might people, young and old, be helped to grasp the reality of our connectedness with the natural world upon which our existence depends?  The iconic ‘Earthrise’ picture taken from the spacecraft orbiting the moon in 1968 is a useful starting point.  The blue and white planet itself seems like a space craft from that distance, a beautiful object covered by life sustaining water in the form of seas and clouds that gave rise to organic life of which we are an evolved and highly complex form. Water can only exist in its liquid form on planets that are an optimal distance from the star that they orbit. The remarkable combination of factors that have led to the evolution of life on earth, providing the stability for over 3.5 billion years to allow life to evolve are now well understood.  BBC TV series such as those by Brian Cox and David Attenborough allow us to share this understanding. Prof. Cox’s Wonders of the Solar System is indeed well-named and can be comprehended and discussed by secondary school pupils. Such programmes provoke a real sense of wonder as well as what can be called ‘global consciousness’ – the big picture, at the scale of the planet, of why life exists at all and how it now coats the planet in a single complex global ecosystem of which we have evolved as a totally dependent part. Our conscious minds and capacity for complex thought and language have emerged only in very recent evolutionary time but have given us a remarkable capacity to modify the physical earth. Developing global consciousness is an essential step towards grasping the enormity of human impact on the planet that is now threatening to become unsustainable.

Human impact is illustrated by the Suomi satellite picture of a cloud-free western edge of Europe glowing with electric street lighting generated mainly from the release of energy stored in fossil fuels. What if we visualise instead, a picture of the earth with human created energy shut down and instead imagine the glow that would come from the breathing of living organisms busy transforming the energy from the sun into the material that makes up what nature builds, aided by the process of photosynthesis and respiration?  This is an exercise in visualisation that is used in a teacher education workshop at the Centre for Ecological and Environmental Education at the Silesia Botanical Garden in Poland. The Centre is engaged in developing ‘deep education for a sustainable future’, pioneering a pedagogy that combines storytelling, ritual, scientific investigation and creative imagination to connect learners and their teachers to the ‘big picture’ of global consciousness referred to above. The 3-hour workshop centred on the theme of ‘breathing’ takes the participants through three stages:

Story-telling – the archetypal myths relating to breathing such as the creation myth in which life was created by the breath of a universal creator and how breathing provides the basic rhythm of life and illustrates the mystery of existence.

A scientific experiment – that investigates the process of respiration using simple and affordable modern equipment.

Connecting to the big picture:

1.       Visualising the global glow of breath with which nature covers the planet.

2.       Making mind maps together of the many terms derived from the fundamental idea of breathing that provide multiple threads to many aspects of human experience.

3.       Discussing what the situation would be if our only means of understanding breathing was by means of conducting scientific experiments.

This exercise in holistic, inter-connected thinking transcends ‘school knowledge’ and illustrates the power of collaborative and generative learning that draws on all aspects of the learners’ life experience. Breathing is something we all do and experience and is something that we have in common with the rest of the complex web of life. Perhaps this example from a non-formal education setting will stimulate others to share their approaches to holistic learning for global consciousness and our proper place in nature.

Community and the Future

The Dali Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered "Man.... Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."

Margaret Wheatley is a community imagineer, author and fascinating specialist in engagement. She has worked in communities around the world, especially with aboriginal (First Nations) peoples, in helping them understand that "no one is coming to help them", but that have tremendous power "in and through community". She suspects that this applies to us all. 

Her newest book  - So Far from Home : Lost and Found in Our Brave New World  (Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 2012) - feels dark. When asked why, she quietly replies that "these are dark times". Her catalogue of shadows and curtains on our world including the sense that the problems we face are increasing and the solutions we try don't appear to work; we appear to have shrinking resources as we expand our presence on the planet, but no means of increasing our ability to supply food, water and energy equitably; individuals feel an increasing uncertainty about their identity and the meaning of their lives, yet they are better connected through technology with other voices than we have ever been; people report that they are "busy, busy, busy" and that they are overwhelmed and experience fear, anxiety and distress. All of this tends to focus our sense that we need leaders and leadership, but leadership and effective leaders seem to be in short supply. Its pretty bleak out there.

Yet there is something present that we tend to overlook and that is the power of community - real community, not a Facebook group or a Linkedin network. People caring about each other locally. Wheatley points out that "nothing living lives alone" and that "we are bundles of potential that manifests only in relationship". So as to create health and move to solutions, we need to make connections and build community. Given that, in her view, "no one else is coming", its critical to realize that, in the words of the Native American Hopi Elders, "we are the ones we have been waiting for". 

Rather than focus on the darkness within and around us, there is a need to focus on possibilities. These means that we need not confine ourselves to the preconceived possibilities for our future - we can "break out" and be "disruptive". Rather than ask "what's wrong and how do we fix it" we should ask "what's possible and who cares?". 

"We are [as individuals and as communities] bundles of potential that manifests only in relationships" - so we need to build community and explore possibilities. 

Wheatley draws attention to the prophecies of the Hopi Nation - an Arizona American First Nation. They suggest that the fourth world (our world) is about to end the fifth world is about to begin. This fifth world is one in which we stop the search for economic growth and focus instead on re-finding the balance between man and nature, between self and community and within self. This thinking is captured in this statement from the Hopi elders:

This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.

The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of
the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.
See who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all, ourselves.
For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

-The Elders, Oraibi, Arizona Hopi Nation

The question for us is simple: are we willing to push off into the middle of the river?

 

Stephen Murgatroyd