Toddlers with matchboxes

By Monica Graaff

Ever since we discovered how to use fire, we humans have been like “toddlers with matchboxes” – and dangerously so.

So said science writer and lecturer Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature (first published in 1997). She was talking at the inaugural lecture of the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership’s Resilience Forum in Cape Town on 27 August 2009.

Her fondly delivered description of our “relatively new species” conjures up a vivid image of how we humans have become too smart and successful for our own good. So smart and populous in fact, that our beloved “heat, beat and treat” approach to almost everything could threaten our very own survival.

The problem with our approach to solving problems is that it usually causes a host of other problems in its wake – problems that in turn need solving. Human induced climate change is an obvious example.

A smart way to re-invent our survival is to learn from other successful species that adopt a less hell-fire-and-brimstone approach and manage to create and re-create, for example, in water and at room temperature.

Biomimicry is a new science that studies nature’s models and then imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve human problems. It points out that in Nature there are 3.8 million years of evolution and 30 million other species to learn from.

The discipline offers a new way of viewing and valuing nature and introduces an era based not on what we can extract from the natural world, but on what we can learn from it.

Benyus, who is based in Montana, USA, heads up a design consultancy that places a biologist on every team along with engineers, scientists, designers and business leaders. Their job is to hear the problem that needs solving and then provide an audit of how other species would approach the same problem, sustainably.

She is currently in South Africa to run a training programme for designers and consultants in Limpopo.  It is her first trip to Africa, and she is palpably “blown away” by coming into contact with the remarkable variety of biodiversity that we have here. “So much to learn from”, she points out, right on our doorstep.

The results of biomimicry so far have been extraordinary. Here are some of the Africa-based examples she provided in her lively presentation, which she backed with stunning photographic wildlife imagery. They involved new eco-smart technologies learnt from how the stripes on a zebra’s back regulate temperature. Or from how the mucus in a giraffe’s mouth protects it from being torn to shreds by Acacia thorns. Or from how termite mounds run extraordinarily efficient air-conditioning systems. Or from what we can learn from basking hippos about sun protection. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg of opportunity

Benyus is currently putting together a free-for-all Google-like matchmaking portal database of Nature’s solutions, as they emerge: AskNature.org.  It will put designers and technologists who invent products and systems in touch with biologists so they can match human needs with Nature’s solutions.

One of the clues, according to biomimicry, is to not look at problems in isolation. We need to define our problems differently and look for “sets of solutions”. Another is to look at one of the key principles of successful evolution: “preserving life”. “Just look at a bird’s nest”, she suggests. “If we put life at the centre of all decision making, we will get it right.”

Benyus might label us as ‘toddlers’, but she is not hard on us humans. She points out that evolution only happens with mistakes and the opportunities that arise to correct these. Nature chooses what works, she says, and we have all the information we need at our fingertips to find the sustainable solutions. But we need to look to Nature for these because our own “heat, beat and treat” set of solutions is not doing the job.

We have had a lot of fun being “toddlers with matchboxes”, but it’s time to grow up.

Monica Graaff is the 2008 SAB Environmental Journalist of the Year and an associate of Incite Sustainability.