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Ethical living

Earth watch

Mother nature has 38
billion years' experience in conservation, so she's an ideal source of
inspiration. Lucy Siegle takes a lesson in biomimicry

Sunday April 17, 2005
The Observer

Individual angst
is all very well, but as a collective we human beings rate ourselves
pretty highly. We know we're unique, fabulous and important because we
tell ourselves so all the time. And although the epithet 'terminal
uniqueness' was coined in reference to alcoholism, it could also apply
quite generally.

And we do, of course, possess some interesting distinguishing features.
For example, we are the only species which extracts resources from the
ground via mining or quarrying. Unfortunately, it is precisely this kind
of unique behaviour which tends to get us into one fine mess after
another, as catalogued by the recently released Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment (http://www.millenniumassessment.org/).
An audit of the world's ecosystem services, it has taken 1,300 researchers
from 95 nations four years to complete, and to summarise - which is useful
given that it runs to 2,500 pages - it reveals that 60 per cent of the
world's ecosystem services are being used unsustainably and/or being
degraded.

Failing to
curb our enthusiasm for just about all of the earth's resources, including
fresh water, fish stocks and virgin forest, means that between 10 and 30
per cent of the world's species face extinction. The human ego, it seems,
is inversely proportional to levels of biodiversity.

Not surprisingly then, the latest solutions to environmental mayhem
seek to take humans down a peg or two. Take, for example, biomimicry (http://www.biomimicry.org/), an
emerging science which gives nature credit for having 3.8bn years of
experience in matters such as recycling and conservation, and suggests
that we should not only talk to the animals, in the manner of Dr Dolittle,
but actually learn from them. So to curb climate-changing emissions caused
by heating and cooling buildings, we should study the way termites
regulate their mounds using a complex web of tunnels. It works with
plants, too. If you want to build a better solar cell, for example, follow
the structure of a leaf. Eventually, it is argued, this humble approach
will lead us to design out waste and toxicity.

Proponents of conservation or ecological medicine sing from a similar
hymn sheet. Saving exotic animals or the rainforest is not just about
encouraging people to adopt an elephant or sponsor a patch of jungle, but
to understand that their own survival relies on biodiversity, too. 'It is
not known how many viruses or other infectious agents in the environment,
potentially harmful to man, are being held in check by the natural
regulation afforded by biodiversity,' stresses a report by US researchers.
Meanwhile, one that we do know about, namely malaria, has become the
scourge of the developing world thanks to climate change and the
destruction of forest habitats.

All of which goes to show that it's high time for this new kind of
power sharing with flora, fauna , the birds and bees. At the very least,
it will leave us all feeling a little less terminally unique.

[email-masked]

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