Janine Benyus is happy to be at home. And with her Montana abode nestled
within the largest contiguous wilderness in the lower 48 states of the US, who
can blame her?
The “great pause,” as she refers to the
COVID-19-enforced
lockdown in many corners of the globe, presents a great opportunity for
reflection. It’s also a great chance to think and ask questions.
“When we’re sick, we pause,” she said during a virtual chat hosted by the
Biomimicry Institute on Thursday. “And it gets you to thinking about the system
that you’re in and what you are doing that is making you get so sick all the
time.”
Benyus has been asking these types of questions all her life.
Today, at the heart of her work as a biologist, author and innovation consultant
is her development of biomimicry
concepts.
In fact, she has written six books on the subject, championing human beings’
emulation of nature’s genius in their
designs
— something that has captured the business community’s imagination as it aims to
create a healthier, more sustainable planet.
“I was that kid who was sent out to get a bottle of milk and never made it back.
I was in the grass with the ants and outside all the time. My childhood was very
much a Wind in the Willows kind of thing, with real live characters that
happened to be rabbits and butterflies. That wasn’t just the case at three or
four, but all the way through high school and into college. Basically, I’ve been
doing it ever since.”
Benyus was in candid conversation with Azita
Ardakani, a serial entrepreneur
and biomimicry Masters student, as part of a YouTube-streamed fireside chat.
The digital nature of the meeting triggered a discussion as to the role of the
natural world during the pandemic. It is a situation that made more of us
realize how we get sick when we have underlying conditions — and that the planet
has underlying conditions right now, as well. As Ardakani offers by way of
introduction, COVID-19 is like Mother Nature sending everyone to their rooms.
“Our planet has these comorbidities,” Benyus says, pointing to ecological
collapse and climate change as two conditions that have created a greater risk of global pandemics.
“We’ve just been eating through [the planet] and colonizing it. And we’re
spillover prone — or virus prone — right now. So, 76 percent of our forests are
fragmented. Because we have iPhones, we need new minerals, so we build roads and
we mine. [All of this] brings us closer to these populations with organisms that
we’d never been before.”
Life’s natural defences — its immune system — which normally keeps everything in
balance, has been frayed, she argued.
“Viruses are all around us. In a square meter, 800 million viruses a day fall
from the sky. They are a hugely important part of our world and our evolution.
But these pandemics happen when the natural defences are broken. [Meanwhile]
climate change is just putting everything under stress. So, we’ve got this
natural system that is out of kilter.”
While Benyus is not anti-economic progress, she says our current plight should
encourage a rethink about how our human systems — both economic and social —
might ease the strain on our natural system.
Unlike learning as a scientist, where the focus is on learning about
something, the practice of biomimicry is all about learning from something.
As Benyus explained: “You go out, and you say, ‘Wow, look at that butterfly’s
wings; they are really bright in the sun and then [they become] iridescent.’
Biomimicry is the step of asking, ‘What are you trying to do?’ It’s erasing the
false boundary between you and the other organism.” The butterfly is working to
survive, to mate or to communicate — all of the things us humans must do, too.
Benyus is delighted that biomimicry is being picked up as a foundation for
cities to reimagine how they might operate in a post-pandemic future. Might
economies be remade to work more like ecosystems — with principles of robust
circulation whereby money acts like blood, reaching every cell, rather than
facing blockages as currently happens, for example?
Similarly, our social systems are struggling, too, with disconnected community
networks that fail to support people that need help the most: “That whole
picture of inequality really helps me when I think about, ‘What if nutrients
couldn’t get to one part of an ecosystem? What would happen to them? What if
they were hoarded somewhere?’”
Benyus has spent plenty of time considering one of the biggest systems we have:
our homes, to propose new ways of existing in tandem with nature, rather than in
contrast or opposition. Yes, net-zero buildings are great. But can we go
further?
“We’re saying, ‘Let’s make ourselves as small as possible and not harm anything
around us.’ But let’s break that open and say, ‘Let’s put the wellness not just
inside our homes, but outside the walls,’” she said. “How can we go from meeting
our own needs to doing what other organisms do, which is hailing goodness and
benefit to everything around us?”
This so-called Project Positive is clearly what is getting her fired up the most
right now. Healing the planet, rather than having a less negative impact upon
it, is the answer. “This is the opposite of eating the world and giving nothing
back. It’s reciprocity. It’s what people who tend to the wild, such as the
Native Americans in my part of the world; they knew you couldn’t keep taking
[from nature].”
In the meantime, the pandemic has helped to reset our natural world — and our
mindsets — and Benyus could not be happier. “I don’t know care about the economy
roaring back; I want the land to roar back, and it is. Watch it heal.
“You don’t have to leave this planet. [But] you might just have to change your
busyness imperative.
“The paradox with our systems is that, even though we can see a lot of the ways
it doesn’t work for a lot of people, we’re seeing massive cooperation; people
are doing things differently.
“We’re seeing a bit of utopian glimmer coming through, and natural selection
chooses what works over and over," she said. "So, when we get back to normal, we get this
glorious choice to put back in our lives only what is best, only what we found
made life worth living.”
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Content creator extraordinaire.
Tom is founder of storytelling strategy firm Narrative Matters — which helps organizations develop content that truly engages audiences around issues of global social, environmental and economic importance. He also provides strategic editorial insight and support to help organisations – from large corporates, to NGOs – build content strategies that focus on editorial that is accessible, shareable, intelligent and conversation-driving.
Published May 25, 2020 11am EDT / 8am PDT / 4pm BST / 5pm CEST