Janine Benyus

KEYNOTE SPEAKER // JANINE BENYUS

Speaker Janine Benyus
Janine Benyus
Co-founder, THE BIOMIMICRY GUILD


Inspiration for Innovation: Learning from Nature (co-presentation with Günter Pauli)

The time has come to look at nature as an inspiration for innovation

The market economy thrives on innovation. Investments in science and technology permit us to identify new ways and means of responding to consumer needs. In modern times, humanity has engaged in production and consumption systems which are not only polluting, the way we live simply has gone beyond the carrying capacity of the ecosystems. As a result we are encroaching on the very life supporting environment on which we depend. The loss of biodiversity is well documented, and the news has not gotten better lately, on the contrary.

There is another way of looking at the same reality. Whatever did not work in Nature turned into a fossil. Whatever does work and still works, incorporates the genius that surrounds us, capable of responding to all basic needs of all species (except one) with what is locally available. The ingenious combination of physics, chemistry and biology by critters belonging to five different kingdoms (animals, plants, fungi, protista, monera) permits to perform all the functions at ambient temperature and pressure for which industry needs to use the energy guzzling 'heat, beat and treat' solution.

Time has come to consider how the gecko sticks, without using glue, and certainly without the need to apply formaldehyde which off-gasses for months and even years. The gecko knows how to apply the van der Waal forces better than anyone. How come birds generate colors without color pigments, and certainly without the need for any heavy metals, which contaminate our water and soil for years and even decades? The abalone knows how to produce ceramics in cold water with protein and calcium carbonate, and certainly without the need for any high heat. And, the list goes on... At present, we have described over 2,100 such technologies, and the exercise has only just begun.

Time has come not to simply learn ABOUT Nature, but to actually learn FROM Nature. Quickly we will realize that the path to sustainability has simply only just begun.

A selection of these technologies will be profiled in the upcoming book by Janine Benyus and Gunter Pauli, Nature's 100 Best, to be published in October 2008 on the occasion of the IUCN fourth World Conservation Congress.

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