UNLEASH-ing Nature’s Innovations through Public-Planet Partnerships.
This week 1000 talents from all over the world will come to Denmark for the UNLEASH innovation lab, with the aim of creating real, implementable and scalable solutions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I’m excited to be one of those individuals who will be engaging in a week of co-creation, and hopefully contributing towards new breakthrough initiatives that address some of the grand challenges that the human world is faced with.
As a Biomimicry specialist, I’m hopeful that focus areas such as Sustainable Consumption, Food, Water, Energy, and Urban Sustainability will mean that the natural world should be at the center of the discussions that will take place.
I believe that as we look to the private sector to bridge an annual investment gap of $2.5 trillion to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, we may be overlooking our most promising — and arguably only — solution for survival and regenerative development: nature itself.
As environmentalists, we try to protect nature. Biomimicry inspires us to learn from nature. But overall, we are not consciously partnering and collaborating with nature to solve some of the most pressing challenges that face us. We don’t actively forge collaborations with other species. We don’t leverage nature’s open source innovations. We don’t form trade deals with microbial communities. We don’t develop relationships with other ecosystems. We don’t form consortiums with our forests, nor coalitions with our oceans.
Our planet puts 3.8 billion years of open-source R&D at our fingertips. It is abundant with priceless patents, the most advanced algorithms, and the most skilled architects, engineers, green chemists and systems designers. The cost equivalent of humans replicating nature’s open-source R&D–offering 3.8 billion years of innovation and free patents, and over USD100 trillion in free ecosystem services, is incomparable.
Meanwhile, conservationists struggle to promote natural infrastructure as economically and ecologically lucrative, even though they are invested in finding ways to use financial incentives to preserve nature.
In reality though, nature doesn’t need our “protection,” and it’s worth asking: Has our fervor for human-centered design eclipsed our ability to recognize opportunities for “non-human centered” solutions that integrate nature as an innovation partner in sustainable development?
Nature is, and should be, our greatest social and economic partner, and that is why for the UNLEASH innovation lab, I put forwards the idea of Public-Plant Partnerships (PPP).
A New Approach: Public-Planet Partnerships (PPPs)
First of all, by “public,” I mean businesses, governments, social innovators, and scientists — essentially, the human world.
By “planet,” I mean leveraging the wisdom of more than 9 million species over 3.8 billion years of research and development, and priceless patents and algorithms. Plus, more than $100 trillion in free ecosystem services provided through natural capital — the world’s stocks of natural assets, including soil, air, water, and all living things. The cost-equivalent of humans replicating these is incomparable.
And by “partnership,” I mean mutually beneficial, win-win collaborations between public and planet. There are many examples of the public attempting to partner with the planet across various sectors: partnering with fungi to fight global hunger by creating climate adaptive crops, partnering with pigeons to monitor air pollution, and partnering with frogs to collect data on water health indicators.
PPP Framework
The Public Planet Partnerships framework was developed to help create new solutions that solve specific challenges linked to the SDGs, and to improve existing solutions within organizations.
Comprised of tools, case studies, and technical resources, the framework assists innovators to develop mutually beneficial, win-win collaborations that solve challenges related to the SDGs, rather than exploiting nature’s resources for the primary purpose of human gain.
www.publicplanetpartnerships.com
The PPP concept propagates the idea that human development can heal and regenerate Earth. This recognition comes from the understanding that humans have always developed the places they’ve inhabited and that many cultures throughout history have had symbiotic partnerships with the land. The goal of PPPs is to rekindle this wisdom, integrate it into the evolutionary insights of modern science, and apply it to social innovation and development.
I’m excited to bring these insights to the design table at UNLEASH through the Education & ICT track, and I’m looking forward to updating you throughout the journey!
