We slip into the school of nature, assuming a beginner’s mind of the living world.

If we hedge up close to the natural world, we rub shoulders with real resilience, regeneration and unity. Our ‘house’ survives through its own regeneration, sustained through natural permanence. Not your concrete block permanence, but a permanence fitting to form, moving to accommodate; rearranging when needed.

Yet, it seems we tuned out and missed the magic! Scientists label today as the Age of Humans: the Anthropocene. The tone is not a celebratory one.

Weare heading for a future inhabited by 10 billion humans, all with a demand for space and stuff; stuff which strips into natural capital. The imbalances are bringing deadly symptoms.

Scientists, designers, farmers, policy makers and even economists are rewriting the narrative: written via the patterns and principles of the living world. This post slips into the school of nature, a school with no graduation date! We come with a beginner’s mind as the apprentice of the living world.

Photo by Nejc Košir from Pexels

Field Trip: Forest Floor

Head to the forest floor for a show of permanent renewal; watch the seasons blend the scenes. We open in summer. Its abundance chimes, bringing food and foliage to the soil and the living community. The rhythm slows up, almost in disguise, as the autumnal tree returns its leaves to the ground. Creatures snap these up for fodder and shelter. Feel the soil absorb these leaves, soak up the rain. Smell the sustenance. Hear these trees slow into winter rest and repair.

Breathe!

Watch the forest toss and turn under the spring’s warming sun. Notice the tree extracting its nutrients from the fertile soil and lean on the sun’s energy to reproduce the food and foliage, once more.

Scan the ground. Any leftover waste? Any polluted air or depleted resources?

How much we seem to have missed, despite starring in this show year after year!

Class

Biomimicry, permaculture and regenerative design all mimic nature’s processes to build regeneration into the living landscape. Learning about the environment is being replaced with learning from the environment. Mastery is life long: a continual opportunity for us to reconcile with Nature et al.

“Like nature, much of science relies on incremental discoveries that together lead to innovation. Each scientist shares information and data that can be used by others to advance their own research and add to the overall body of human knowledge”. Allie Miller

Principle: Nature Recycles Everything

ROSS/TOM STACK ASSOC/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Nature’s Inspiration: Return to the forest floor and there is no landfill or pile up of waste. The soil and creatures claim littered leaves and animal droppings. Everything is circular, cyclical with a closed loop. An interrelated system. Think of the tree’s repeated seasonal cycle, living off renewable energy in which it has also given back. The continual process of recycling, with repair throughout the winter, maximises what is already here.

Human Innovation: Circular Economy — Nature depends upon a changing source of energy (sun, rain) and adapts. Humans too, depend but like to measure and control. We predetermine rather than adapt and have no plan for our ‘unwanted waste’. The landfill grows and our home gets hotter.

The Circular Economy learning is shaping the future of how we, across industries, come together to reconsider how we source, use and ‘dispose’ of our materials. How do we close the loop as nature does? How can we create a system of renewal with room to adapt? See just how expansive the idea is by visiting the Ellen MacArthur Foundation site.

Circular Economy Infographic: Ellen MacArthur Foundation

Principle: Nature Runs on Sunlight

Tidal Gardens Pinterest Image

Nature’s Inspiration: The ocean, too is a source of sunny inspiration- with ocean mushroom proteins using sunlight to produce colour. No excessive fuelled synthetics used here, no dyed streams of nature’s water — and no micro-plastic pollution left floating in the environment. Instead, a supply chain of sunlight and a fluorescent glow of colours and patterns. As well as brightly beautiful, the Discosoma is a hardy reef plant with plenty to teach us about effective use of sunlight.

Human Innovation: Werewool is developing colourful fashion fibres from the power of protein; Tackling the textile industry’s massive carbon footprint. These fibres are designed to be 100% biodegradable — ensuring fashion is fair to the planet. Proteins are everywhere and naturally available. Growing fibres dependent upon these proteins rather than synthetic dyes and excessive processes is a nature-inspired step towards whole scale reduction.

Running on sun brings us back to nature’s ability to keep things simple.

Principle: Nature Rewards Cooperation

It is hard to exist in isolation. Survival is a cooperative affair. Take the plant and the pollinator: A mutual partnership.

Photo by Alejandro Barrón from Pexels

Nature’s Inspiration: Plant Roots Recruit Protection from Pathogens Maize is under scrutiny as the plant protects itself from dangerous pathogens in the soil. The maize root is vulnerable: surrounded by harmful microbes. The root recruits the safe microbes and secretes its own defence strategy: a compound taking out insects and threats. The pathogens are out-competed and the plant is able to extract a richer supply of nutrients.

Human Innovation: Cooperation in agriculture gave way to isolating crops and farm animals. Under pressure to feed a populated planet, chemicals became the tool of the century — pumping up our crops and cattle. The Maize plant points to nature’s pre-existing solution for hardy and sustaining crops. Cooperation requires no synthetic add ons. The aspiring human- apprentices now search for the potential that comes from a plant’s cooperative means of optimising the surrounding soil for healthy survival.

The climate crisis needs optimal soils for regeneration and we humans need a safer culture when it comes to growing our own food. To learn more visit Ask Nature.

Today’s examples skim the surface of what the living world teaches us. There is an abundance of critical inspiration around us. Nature has solutions we just need to keep learning. We have explored just three of Nature’s principles. To learn of the 6 other principles put forth by Biomimicry, Ask Nature!