Nature by Design Part 3
Closing the valley of indifference with compassion
Our relationship with nature fashioned how we perceive the world. In the first installment of a 3-part series, I explored how fauna and flora shaped the human mind. In the second, I looked at how colorful landscapes attest to cultural exchange. In this article, I will voyage through various cultures and examine how nature influenced the human mind, ultimately influencing our design choices.
Throughout the series, we’ve explored how nature has been offering us all that we need. Our need for resources has pushed us to ultimately reshaping our planet. Whether it is to obtain food or construct shelter, we have overexploited the Earth. The landscape is a testament to this.
Detailed below are three visually distinct examples that range from creating new ecosystems to extracting resources to urbanizing natural areas. Each shows a meaningful arrangement of a satellite image pair — before and after — with time as the gatekeeper of change and meaning. Let’s start with a clear question: What is meaning?
Perceived meaning
Meaning is never communicated on its own; it is often defined by its context. This implies that what is meant by a word, a text, a concept, or an action is influenced by other words, a previous text, another concept in the back of your head, etc. To some extent, ‘meaning’ is inspired. Inspiration often melds influence. So without further ado, let’s get into the word influence.
The original usage of the word influence had the general sense of an influx, or the flow of matter. As a matter of fact, in Latin, influere from in- ‘into’ and fluere ‘to flow’. However, today’s meaning is the ‘imperceptible or indirect action exerted to cause changes’. Due to this imperceptible aspect, an uncertainty unfolds. As Bertrand Russell puts it in his inquiry into meaning and truth: “The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.” Apart from this distinctly interesting interaction or influence, he continues: “Science seems to be at war with itself: when it most means to be objective, it finds itself plunged into subjectivity against its will.”
To recap, influence and change are interconnected, as living beings are in an ecosystem. By definition, an ecosystem refers to an interconnected system of a community of interacting organisms and their physical environment. In my opinion, the word ecosystem begs the viewer to zoom out and rethink things.
However, objectivity is not an easy task. The Triad of Limitations created by psychologist Dr. Robert M. Lindner, is gracefully on point as it highlights our everlasting struggle with reality. In an ever-changing ecosystem, we are still limited by the quality of the environment we live in. I imagine pollution (water, air, food) and medicine pulling in opposite directions the limitations of mortality.
In the three visually distinct satellite image examples below (new ecosystems, resource extraction, urbanization) you’ll be able to refer to each of these limitations. First, new ecosystems are being designed without necessarily weighing in all factors that could destabilize natural ecosystems.
New ecosystems
In an effort to answer the demand for fresh fruits and vegetables, massive and rapid agricultural developments have been observed across the world. The most striking example is in Almeria Province along Spain’s southern coast.
In the last century, this province was a very dry region. It has, in the meantime, developed into Europe’s most intense agricultural habitat to respond to the demand of fresh produce for all-season. The choice in location is the long insolation, which allows up to five harvests per year, totaling over three million tons of produce. A pair of satellite images show Almeria in 1975 and in 2011, respectively.
In 1975, the landscape reflects a typical rural agricultural land. While in 2011, much of the same region has been converted to intensive greenhouse agriculture for the mass production of market produce. Greenhouse dominated land appears as white and gray patches. It covers an area of more than 20 000 hectares or 200 km2 (square km). Besides agriculture, the land has provided us with minerals, precious stones, and fossil fuel. In the second example, we look at a mining example.
Resource extraction
Man has been digging the earth for centuries. From the overexploitation of forests to build houses, forges, workshops and small industries towards the end of the 18th century, to the beginning of industrial coal mining in the early 19th century — marking our use of CO2-producing fossil fuels — we have been extracting all the land has to offer. Below is the example of the Atacama Desert, home to the Escondida Mine in Chile. It is shown at two-time points in 1975, left, and in 2011, right.
The 2011 image shows how the open-pit copper, gold, and silver mine of Escondida Mine (red arrow) has grown and expanded. Currently, it is the largest copper mine in the world and is located at 3 050 m (10 006 ft). Isolated in a barren and arid desert environment, this mine relies heavily on external well fields for water in its mining operations and on temporary barriers to manage water (yellow arrow). In the third and last example, the need to have continuous access to potable water and shelter is exemplified in urban areas.
Urbanization
As the world’s population becomes increasingly urbanized, water and sanitation issues are becoming one of the most critical urban issues of modern times. In a broad sense, this increase in demand shifts the global picture from traditional rural dwellings to makeshift urban neighborhoods. Most governments aren’t planning for the future, or simply can’t.
The example of the once-tiny desert town Las Vegas is distinctly strong. Las Vegas is a monster project of urbanization, that has placed and still places a massive strain on scarce water supplies. In 25 years, from 1990 to 2015, the population increased by 41%. This growth is credited to the Hoover dam controlling the outflow of Lake Mead and to urban planning.
As the uncontrolled increase of urbanization continues, a direct byproduct is the decrease of natural habitats, in turn, endangering other species. In Africa, and arguably the most famous example is elephants casually crossing the lobby of a hotel as if they owned the place. In Zambia, this is a common sighting in the Mfuwe Lodge which is located squarely on one elephant herd’s preferred path to some mango trees. Indeed, elephants share this information from a generation to another to enjoy this delectable fruit. Many species are concerned, some of which are endemic or cannot be found anywhere else. Below is a preview of data collected by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for the different levels of endangerment of species in Africa.
As of 2018, we didn’t have a comprehensive, holistic estimate of all the different components of Earth’s biomass. As reported by Prof. Ron Milo, we represent 0.01% of Earth’s total biomass, however, our impact is disproportionate. Since the rise of human civilization, 83% of wild mammals have been lost.
This urges us to pause and contemplate our actions such as manufacturing plastic. If our natural heritage isn’t taken into account when new urban projects are proposed then we should stop, and reconsider if it makes sense to continue to squander such natural resources.
It’s not only the animals on the endangered species list that humanity has had a negative impact on; we’ve also neglected our own kind. We are responsible for not only our own actions but for each other. However, only a small group of people make decisions whose actions have consequences that ripple across our planet. A striking example can be found in urbanization. As cities grow into urban jungles, the disparities between urban cities and rural dwellings get larger. As Klaus Toepfer, ex-director of the U.N. Environment Program, said in a statement announcing the “One Planet Many People” atlas: “The battle for sustainable development, for delivering a more environmentally stable, just and healthier world, is going to be largely won and lost in our cities”.
Compassion by design
Unfortunately, our history shows that we, as a species, have not been focused on peace, but on competing with each other. We compete with neighboring countries, abuse the land, and our designs focus more on winning (a market, users, over competitors, etc) without any other regard than being efficient at it. Some chapters of our humanity are peaceful, but we have a long way to go in terms of compassion. Our story is too human, there are always losers and winners. We have succeeded in killing each other, quite efficiently with a heavy price tag on other living species as collateral.
From the remnants of the First World War at the border between Belgium and France to nuclear disasters, like Chernobyl, we can clearly see that the land is slowly recovering from our imprint. More than 30 years after the disaster, Ukraine still has to face the environmental and health effects of the explosion, an event that has rendered nuclear energy questionable.
Fortunately, not only the flora recovered but Chernobyl became a safe haven for wildlife, as seen in the mosaic of images on the left. We have the responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish our pale blue dot, our planet Earth. As Carl Sagan puts it, it is the only home we’ve ever known.
This responsibility brings me to a personal experience from a while back. I’ve lost a member of my family to dementia and I’ve always wondered what can do to show kindness towards vulnerable people that suffer from dementia. The question led me to places which I might write about someday, but what I realized is that we are all vulnerable. A particular methodology, developed by Prof. Cathy Treadaway and used by CARIAD researchers in their design research, places people with advanced dementia in the heart of the design process by considering compassion by design. In short, the design has to: retain a person’s sense of self, experience the present moment, and encourage high-quality connection with others.
But I have one last question: How can we retain our humanity without experiencing our environment and without encouraging each other to be better?
Most of our paths are made by continual treading. On a geological scale, our species is young. If we were to represent Earth’s existence on a 24-hour span, mankind appeared in the last 5 seconds, and the industrial revolution exists for 2 ms. However, we are neither bystanders nor alien to nature. To some extent, we are comparable to a sprout that is developing its green leaves.
Beyond culture, our habitable world isn’t yet that big. As physics puts it, every object in the universe with a mass is influencing another. Our relationship among each other, with other living beings, and with the land is not a one-way street. Let us pause and redesign our future, together!
Here are the first two parts of the series:
