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Visions for a Positive Future
One Earth
Voices Visions for a Positive Future The planet is under pressure, and the world is at a crossroads. The environmental grand challenges we face can seem overwhelming, but hope and a vision for a better future are needed to inspire action and change. We ask individuals to provide their vision for overcoming challenges and achieving a positive future. Innovating for Climate Solutions
A Food- and Water-Secure World
Hope Is the Young People
Kim Cobb
Olcay U¨nver
Svein Tveitdal
Georgia Institute of Technology
UN-Water
Klima 2020
As a climate scientist, I find it easy to fall into despair in the face of the drumbeat of broken weather and climate records. The global response to climate change has been woefully inadequate, and we are running out of time. But this abject failure has sparked a global movement of citizens who are not content to sit back and wait for comprehensive climate policy to take shape. The youth climate movement is one obvious example, but it is just one branch of a huge tree that is pushing up and expanding, growing stronger every single day. From state-level policies that put a muchneeded price on carbon to collectives of farmers aiming to advance regenerative agricultural practices to a network of smart sealevel sensors springing up on the vulnerable, low-lying coast in my home state, concerned citizens are forming potent pockets of action on climate. In doing so, they demonstrate that the solutions lie in the combination of complementary cross-sector skillsets that have traditionally operated in isolation. Scientists and engineers must work with our social science counterparts and with local governmental officials, industry representatives, non-governmental organizations, and our neighbors to forge new ideas and stress test them against the laws of nature and man alike. This is the true frontier of climate innovation, where existing tools and technology can spring to life. Such partnerships might hit several hurdles before they succeed, but therein lies the risk, and the promise, of the 21st century battle for our climate future.
A major challenge to the future of our planet and the life on it has been whether we can securely provide water and food for a growing population, manage the competition for natural resources, and reverse the wide-scale environmental degradation. Despite the recent assessments on biodiversity, land degradation, pollution, and contamination, including that of our waterways and oceans, there is much scope to be cautiously optimistic. The broad recognition of these issues, coupled with the commitments that governments have made (such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Accord), has triggered greater action beyond governments and is becoming a priority agenda item for businesses, producers, customers, and citizens at large, and the youth are particularly becoming actively involved. We are seeing promising changes in the entire food value and supply chains toward being more environmentally friendly, water efficient, and carbon neutral, including shifts to eliminate loss and waste. An increasing number of countries are taking action to better regulate and incentivize with these objectives in mind. We are at a crossroads where we are not only continuously reminded of the negative consequences of our previous decisions and lifestyles but also aware of the need to drastically change course, and we know the ways and means for doing that. My cautious optimism is based on the recognition that none of us—no government head, no corporate CEO, no civic leader—is or will be able to say we didn’t know. So, let each one of us be an engine of the change in every single way we can.
A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the next generation. A politician looks for the success of his party; a statesman for that of his country. The statesman wishes to steer, while the politician is satisfied to drift. This quote from theologian James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888) is even more relevant today. Politicians have not changed since then. They will not act before the consequences of climate change become evident in their next election period. The damage to the planet will continue until politicians will need to act to be re-elected. Until then, the climate crisis will become more severe, as well as more difficult and expensive to solve. Now the hope and a vision for a better future lie in the grassroots and young people, such as the school children’s climate movement. It is so important that they keep their motivation and stand up against forces that try to ridicule and patronize them. They are future voters and can still save the world from the worst climate scenarios. Through the use of social media and the continuation of strikes, they might force the older generation to confront the climate crisis and initiate a green political revolution. The politicians of the last 30 years deserve little respect. The costly climate crisis they have left for the next generation could easily have been avoided had they listened to advice from the science community. Now a younger generation will help push them to action. As a result of the young climate activists, I am now optimistic that the next decade will give us the needed turnaround to appropriately address climate change.
One Earth 1, September 20, 2019 ª 2019 Published by Elsevier Inc. 3
One Earth
Voices Grand Challenges Connected
Accelerating Transformational Change
Can Wang School of Environment, Tsinghua University
With the growing understanding of links among alleviating poverty, protecting the environment, and mitigating climate changes, it is crucial for the world to maximize the synergy of addressing these three challenges together instead of treating them in isolation. However, actions are difficult to achieve given the existing obstacles. Polices to tackle these three issues usually focus on different space ranges and time spans and thus often lead to trade-offs for resource allocation. Governance is fragmented for various challenges. Income inequality can cause the pursuit of short-term economic benefits at the cost of the environment and climate. Scientific research lacking international coordination also impedes the development of technical solutions to meet localized challenges with speed. We need a paradigm shift from isolation to integration. Future strategies must dynamically link environment and climate protection with poverty alleviation and economic development. Synthetic strategies enable feasible, robust, and sustainable transformation of economies, especially for developing countries. Good practices offer a pathway to implementation. Fostering high-tech economy, institutionalizing coordinated governance, enhancing income equity and environmental education, and promoting cooperated research show success in transforming growth with less energy consumption, lower pollution, and higher welfare. A crucial step is to adopt an ambitious target for long-term challenge and mainstream it into a short- to -mid-term plan.
4 One Earth 1, September 20, 2019
Collaboration in Africa
Michael Nxumalo Rutgers University
Africa Collaborative Grants and Initiatives and FEROSA Secretariat
We face a series of interlocked challenges: a climate crisis, biodiversity loss, a decline in ecosystem services, continued poverty and inequality, and our likely failure to meet many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. ‘‘Transformative change’’ is a concept recently bandied about as a solution, including by the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which is beginning to scope an upcoming assessment specifically focused on the idea. But no one is quite clear on what it means other than no more business as usual. Unfortunately, we risk treating transformative change in the same siloed manner that we have dealt with far too many other sustainability problems. Recent reports, such as the one from the UN Research Institute for Sustainable Development on ‘‘Policy Innovations for Transformative Change,’’ still treat environmental issues as separate from social ones. We desperately need integrated work, or we are in continued trouble. Before we can enact transformational change, we need to practice it ourselves. Recent moves by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and IPBES to issue a joint report tackling both climate change and biodiversity are promising, but they need to be followed up with more action. Researchers must be ready to engage upcoming preparations for the post-2020 biodiversity agenda and Paris Accord for climate to ensure that transformative change is a key concept. In the meantime, our funding agencies and research institutions need to step up and begin the hard work of putting forth integrated and engaged visions for what our transformed world could look like.
It has been well documented that climate change will affect Africa mostly through reduced rainfall, drought, and rising temperatures. In Southern Africa, a number of drought spells resulting in shortages of water and diminished crops have already been felt over the last decade. To cope with this systematically, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has created a climate-change adaptation plan aimed at bringing together the nations of Southern Africa to cope with climate effects. Given that climate-change adaptation includes many progress factors in Southern Africa and the rest of the globe, the SADC has shown dedication to several global climate-change conventions and programs, which were incorporated into its own regional programs. On the other hand, a tale of hope grows in that nations such as South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Angola, and Germany are actively participating in the Southern African Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management Service Center (SASSCAL), which is a cooperative response to global change problems. The participating governments put resources into ensuring that the SASSCAL goals are achieved. This hope was further strengthened by the latest establishment of Southern Africa’s Future Earth Regional Office (FEROSA). FEROSA brings together nations in Southern Africa to work toward a common goal of achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which will not only reduce the impacts of climate change but also add to the knowledge generation that will contribute to a long-lasting solution to the complex problems facing humanity today.
Pamela McElwee
One Earth
Voices Toward a Tastier Food Future
Decolonizing Nature, the Economy, and Society
Competing Claims on a Land of Opportunities
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University
Franklin Obeng-Odoom
Peter H. Verburg Science,
Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University Amsterdam
A number of recent scientific publications have stressed the need to transform food systems to sustainably provide healthy diets for a growing world population. They all agree that we need to cut food loss and waste, eat more plantbased diets, and dramatically improve farming practices. However, less is written about the social and cultural sides of achieving this change. Many find it hard to imagine what these changes would look like on the actual plate. We need new ways of imagining the future taste of a better food system. Fortunately, culinary actors eagerly engage in an exploratory journey of future tastes. Much of the work that innovative chefs do includes diversifying ingredients on the plate, focusing on quality over quantity, finding taste in waste, and discovering inspiring ways to use the whole animal or vegetable (‘‘nose-totail’’ cooking). Where ‘‘molecular gastronomy’’ used to be a shining light of modern gastronomy, many of today’s top chefs celebrate the produce itself and the farmers behind it. I would like to see new partnerships between chefs, farmers, and scientists to find aspirational pathways to healthy, sustainable, and tasty diets. Although there are more than 14,000 edible plant species, only 150–200 are used by humans, and only three (rice, maize, and wheat) contribute to a large proportion of what people eat. There is so much opportunity for a more visionary food future once we jointly start to explore this abundance of flavors and how it can be produced and consumed in ways that contribute to the health, sustainability, and well-being of people and the planet.
The current environmental grand challenges are distressing, so the emphasis on hope and vision is understandable. However, without careful diagnosis of the sources of these socio-ecological problems, hope is empty and vision is utopian. Some have made causal claims linked only to the ‘‘tragedy of the commons’’ or capitalism, but these causal theories are unhelpful. In my view, privatizing the land and its rents underpin the current challenges and their uncertainty. Commoning the land, on the other hand, would not only address these problems, both locally and globally, but also prevent them from happening. More fundamentally, it could lay the foundations for prosperity without destructive growth. This is even more striking when we look at the great transformation that our cities, technology, oil, and water, especially in the Global South, are currently undergoing. These are often considered commons, of course, but without relating them to the land on which they sit and run, their commoning reproduces colonial patterns, sometimes making their commodity forms look no worse. A vision of making land the most fundamental of all commons would not only give hope but also provide certainty for decolonizing nature, the economy, and society.
Our inability to take the necessary actions for a sustainability transition is frustrating. Every day we are confronted with new research indicating the pressing needs of action to counteract the changing climate and biodiversity decline. The enormous challenge of transitions in the economy, energy system, and food system can be overwhelming. Positive change in sustainable land use is more than counteracted by increasing deforestation driven by political ambitions and growing consumption. The recently published IPCC report on climate change and land indicates rightfully that much of the pressures and solutions relate to land use. Land use causes large greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, biodiversity loss, and degradation of resources. At the same time, sustainable land use has the potential to feed a growing population at much lower GHG emissions, and biofuels and reforestation are key to all negative emission scenarios. However, land (especially suitable land) is a limited resource, and competing claims will further increase. The IPCC report contains, however, a very positive message. The message is somewhat hidden given the political fear to intervene with people’s food choices. Limiting our consumption of animal protein, particularly beef, has the potential to free up large parts of our land resources. These can instead be used for more environmentally friendly farming systems, reforestation, and nature conservation. A large part of the solution depends on what we eat, the choices we make in the supermarket or canteen, and ending perverse subsidies on livestock production. It is that simple!
Line Gordon Helsinki Institute of University of Helsinki
Sustainability
One Earth 1, September 20, 2019 5
One Earth
Voices Making More out of Water
Nature-Inspired Engineering
Kate Brauman
Marc-Olivier Coppens
University of Minnesota
Centre for Nature Inspired Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, University College London
Talk of a global water crisis is scary because water is critical to human well-being in many ways. Some are irreplaceable—water to drink, water to grow food, and water to sustain the natural systems that provide us with emotional nourishment and a sense of place. But the vast majority of water use by people is as an instrument—for washing, for cooling, for transport . of things that aren’t water. Even for irrigation, the sector responsible for more than threequarters of global water use, water is still a means to an end: we farm to produce food, income, and identity but not for irrigation itself. And we have many more options for maximizing those outputs than we do for developing new water sources. We can get more crop per drop and more watts per drop and find ways to clean, to cool, and to make a living with less, or even no, water. Changing our mindset, our management, and our research to maximize these outputs provides a pathway for creating the future we want. Ensuring that all people have access to safe drinking water is one outcome among many that all people can agree we want to see in the world. Reorganizing our research within academia by focusing on outcomes instead of research topics illuminates novel research questions and previously untapped partners. It moves us beyond the search for technical fixes or silver bullets and instead highlighting the importance of systems, behavior, and solutions. We can’t make more water, but we can get more of what we want from it.
The collective challenges facing Earth are clear. Despite aspirational targets, the what and the why are easier than the how. Conventional thinking and incremental tweaking prevail. Problems are ‘‘solved’’ in isolation. Solving grand challenges requires a mindset that is not risk averse and transcends individual disciplines while not neglecting subject depth. Help can be found in nature-inspired engineering. Evolved over eons, nature is replete with examples of efficiency, scalability, and resilience. Yet, blindly mimicking nature will not solve our problems. Design space and context of nature and technology differ, from relevant timescales to environmental conditions and socio-economics. Hierarchical transport networks that effectively bridge length scales, force balancing, dynamic self-organization, and the modular structure of networks from genes to ecosystems are natural mechanisms that help us focus and guide a design approach that is thematic— not based on isolated observations but rather on universal fundamentals. Such mechanisms underpin the same desirable properties in nature and in the engineering challenges we aim to solve. Nature-inspired concepts that inform designs we can implement within an applied context are extracted. Nature-inspired engineering is proposed as a systematic design methodology for transformative technology. It promotes lateral thinking for responsible innovation contextualized and grounded in scientific fundamentals. Ultimately, the how treasures nature on our one Earth and appreciates that engineering is a humanity.
6 One Earth 1, September 20, 2019
Voices Visions for a Positive Future The planet is under pressure, and the world is at a crossroads. The environmental grand challenges we face can seem overwhelming, but hope and a vision for a better future are needed to inspire action and change. We ask individuals to provide their vision for overcoming challenges and achieving a positive future. Innovating for Climate Solutions
A Food- and Water-Secure World
Hope Is the Young People
Kim Cobb
Olcay U¨nver
Svein Tveitdal
Georgia Institute of Technology
UN-Water
Klima 2020
As a climate scientist, I find it easy to fall into despair in the face of the drumbeat of broken weather and climate records. The global response to climate change has been woefully inadequate, and we are running out of time. But this abject failure has sparked a global movement of citizens who are not content to sit back and wait for comprehensive climate policy to take shape. The youth climate movement is one obvious example, but it is just one branch of a huge tree that is pushing up and expanding, growing stronger every single day. From state-level policies that put a muchneeded price on carbon to collectives of farmers aiming to advance regenerative agricultural practices to a network of smart sealevel sensors springing up on the vulnerable, low-lying coast in my home state, concerned citizens are forming potent pockets of action on climate. In doing so, they demonstrate that the solutions lie in the combination of complementary cross-sector skillsets that have traditionally operated in isolation. Scientists and engineers must work with our social science counterparts and with local governmental officials, industry representatives, non-governmental organizations, and our neighbors to forge new ideas and stress test them against the laws of nature and man alike. This is the true frontier of climate innovation, where existing tools and technology can spring to life. Such partnerships might hit several hurdles before they succeed, but therein lies the risk, and the promise, of the 21st century battle for our climate future.
A major challenge to the future of our planet and the life on it has been whether we can securely provide water and food for a growing population, manage the competition for natural resources, and reverse the wide-scale environmental degradation. Despite the recent assessments on biodiversity, land degradation, pollution, and contamination, including that of our waterways and oceans, there is much scope to be cautiously optimistic. The broad recognition of these issues, coupled with the commitments that governments have made (such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Accord), has triggered greater action beyond governments and is becoming a priority agenda item for businesses, producers, customers, and citizens at large, and the youth are particularly becoming actively involved. We are seeing promising changes in the entire food value and supply chains toward being more environmentally friendly, water efficient, and carbon neutral, including shifts to eliminate loss and waste. An increasing number of countries are taking action to better regulate and incentivize with these objectives in mind. We are at a crossroads where we are not only continuously reminded of the negative consequences of our previous decisions and lifestyles but also aware of the need to drastically change course, and we know the ways and means for doing that. My cautious optimism is based on the recognition that none of us—no government head, no corporate CEO, no civic leader—is or will be able to say we didn’t know. So, let each one of us be an engine of the change in every single way we can.
A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the next generation. A politician looks for the success of his party; a statesman for that of his country. The statesman wishes to steer, while the politician is satisfied to drift. This quote from theologian James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888) is even more relevant today. Politicians have not changed since then. They will not act before the consequences of climate change become evident in their next election period. The damage to the planet will continue until politicians will need to act to be re-elected. Until then, the climate crisis will become more severe, as well as more difficult and expensive to solve. Now the hope and a vision for a better future lie in the grassroots and young people, such as the school children’s climate movement. It is so important that they keep their motivation and stand up against forces that try to ridicule and patronize them. They are future voters and can still save the world from the worst climate scenarios. Through the use of social media and the continuation of strikes, they might force the older generation to confront the climate crisis and initiate a green political revolution. The politicians of the last 30 years deserve little respect. The costly climate crisis they have left for the next generation could easily have been avoided had they listened to advice from the science community. Now a younger generation will help push them to action. As a result of the young climate activists, I am now optimistic that the next decade will give us the needed turnaround to appropriately address climate change.
One Earth 1, September 20, 2019 ª 2019 Published by Elsevier Inc. 3
One Earth
Voices Grand Challenges Connected
Accelerating Transformational Change
Can Wang School of Environment, Tsinghua University
With the growing understanding of links among alleviating poverty, protecting the environment, and mitigating climate changes, it is crucial for the world to maximize the synergy of addressing these three challenges together instead of treating them in isolation. However, actions are difficult to achieve given the existing obstacles. Polices to tackle these three issues usually focus on different space ranges and time spans and thus often lead to trade-offs for resource allocation. Governance is fragmented for various challenges. Income inequality can cause the pursuit of short-term economic benefits at the cost of the environment and climate. Scientific research lacking international coordination also impedes the development of technical solutions to meet localized challenges with speed. We need a paradigm shift from isolation to integration. Future strategies must dynamically link environment and climate protection with poverty alleviation and economic development. Synthetic strategies enable feasible, robust, and sustainable transformation of economies, especially for developing countries. Good practices offer a pathway to implementation. Fostering high-tech economy, institutionalizing coordinated governance, enhancing income equity and environmental education, and promoting cooperated research show success in transforming growth with less energy consumption, lower pollution, and higher welfare. A crucial step is to adopt an ambitious target for long-term challenge and mainstream it into a short- to -mid-term plan.
4 One Earth 1, September 20, 2019
Collaboration in Africa
Michael Nxumalo Rutgers University
Africa Collaborative Grants and Initiatives and FEROSA Secretariat
We face a series of interlocked challenges: a climate crisis, biodiversity loss, a decline in ecosystem services, continued poverty and inequality, and our likely failure to meet many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. ‘‘Transformative change’’ is a concept recently bandied about as a solution, including by the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which is beginning to scope an upcoming assessment specifically focused on the idea. But no one is quite clear on what it means other than no more business as usual. Unfortunately, we risk treating transformative change in the same siloed manner that we have dealt with far too many other sustainability problems. Recent reports, such as the one from the UN Research Institute for Sustainable Development on ‘‘Policy Innovations for Transformative Change,’’ still treat environmental issues as separate from social ones. We desperately need integrated work, or we are in continued trouble. Before we can enact transformational change, we need to practice it ourselves. Recent moves by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and IPBES to issue a joint report tackling both climate change and biodiversity are promising, but they need to be followed up with more action. Researchers must be ready to engage upcoming preparations for the post-2020 biodiversity agenda and Paris Accord for climate to ensure that transformative change is a key concept. In the meantime, our funding agencies and research institutions need to step up and begin the hard work of putting forth integrated and engaged visions for what our transformed world could look like.
It has been well documented that climate change will affect Africa mostly through reduced rainfall, drought, and rising temperatures. In Southern Africa, a number of drought spells resulting in shortages of water and diminished crops have already been felt over the last decade. To cope with this systematically, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has created a climate-change adaptation plan aimed at bringing together the nations of Southern Africa to cope with climate effects. Given that climate-change adaptation includes many progress factors in Southern Africa and the rest of the globe, the SADC has shown dedication to several global climate-change conventions and programs, which were incorporated into its own regional programs. On the other hand, a tale of hope grows in that nations such as South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Angola, and Germany are actively participating in the Southern African Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management Service Center (SASSCAL), which is a cooperative response to global change problems. The participating governments put resources into ensuring that the SASSCAL goals are achieved. This hope was further strengthened by the latest establishment of Southern Africa’s Future Earth Regional Office (FEROSA). FEROSA brings together nations in Southern Africa to work toward a common goal of achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which will not only reduce the impacts of climate change but also add to the knowledge generation that will contribute to a long-lasting solution to the complex problems facing humanity today.
Pamela McElwee
One Earth
Voices Toward a Tastier Food Future
Decolonizing Nature, the Economy, and Society
Competing Claims on a Land of Opportunities
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University
Franklin Obeng-Odoom
Peter H. Verburg Science,
Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University Amsterdam
A number of recent scientific publications have stressed the need to transform food systems to sustainably provide healthy diets for a growing world population. They all agree that we need to cut food loss and waste, eat more plantbased diets, and dramatically improve farming practices. However, less is written about the social and cultural sides of achieving this change. Many find it hard to imagine what these changes would look like on the actual plate. We need new ways of imagining the future taste of a better food system. Fortunately, culinary actors eagerly engage in an exploratory journey of future tastes. Much of the work that innovative chefs do includes diversifying ingredients on the plate, focusing on quality over quantity, finding taste in waste, and discovering inspiring ways to use the whole animal or vegetable (‘‘nose-totail’’ cooking). Where ‘‘molecular gastronomy’’ used to be a shining light of modern gastronomy, many of today’s top chefs celebrate the produce itself and the farmers behind it. I would like to see new partnerships between chefs, farmers, and scientists to find aspirational pathways to healthy, sustainable, and tasty diets. Although there are more than 14,000 edible plant species, only 150–200 are used by humans, and only three (rice, maize, and wheat) contribute to a large proportion of what people eat. There is so much opportunity for a more visionary food future once we jointly start to explore this abundance of flavors and how it can be produced and consumed in ways that contribute to the health, sustainability, and well-being of people and the planet.
The current environmental grand challenges are distressing, so the emphasis on hope and vision is understandable. However, without careful diagnosis of the sources of these socio-ecological problems, hope is empty and vision is utopian. Some have made causal claims linked only to the ‘‘tragedy of the commons’’ or capitalism, but these causal theories are unhelpful. In my view, privatizing the land and its rents underpin the current challenges and their uncertainty. Commoning the land, on the other hand, would not only address these problems, both locally and globally, but also prevent them from happening. More fundamentally, it could lay the foundations for prosperity without destructive growth. This is even more striking when we look at the great transformation that our cities, technology, oil, and water, especially in the Global South, are currently undergoing. These are often considered commons, of course, but without relating them to the land on which they sit and run, their commoning reproduces colonial patterns, sometimes making their commodity forms look no worse. A vision of making land the most fundamental of all commons would not only give hope but also provide certainty for decolonizing nature, the economy, and society.
Our inability to take the necessary actions for a sustainability transition is frustrating. Every day we are confronted with new research indicating the pressing needs of action to counteract the changing climate and biodiversity decline. The enormous challenge of transitions in the economy, energy system, and food system can be overwhelming. Positive change in sustainable land use is more than counteracted by increasing deforestation driven by political ambitions and growing consumption. The recently published IPCC report on climate change and land indicates rightfully that much of the pressures and solutions relate to land use. Land use causes large greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, biodiversity loss, and degradation of resources. At the same time, sustainable land use has the potential to feed a growing population at much lower GHG emissions, and biofuels and reforestation are key to all negative emission scenarios. However, land (especially suitable land) is a limited resource, and competing claims will further increase. The IPCC report contains, however, a very positive message. The message is somewhat hidden given the political fear to intervene with people’s food choices. Limiting our consumption of animal protein, particularly beef, has the potential to free up large parts of our land resources. These can instead be used for more environmentally friendly farming systems, reforestation, and nature conservation. A large part of the solution depends on what we eat, the choices we make in the supermarket or canteen, and ending perverse subsidies on livestock production. It is that simple!
Line Gordon Helsinki Institute of University of Helsinki
Sustainability
One Earth 1, September 20, 2019 5
One Earth
Voices Making More out of Water
Nature-Inspired Engineering
Kate Brauman
Marc-Olivier Coppens
University of Minnesota
Centre for Nature Inspired Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, University College London
Talk of a global water crisis is scary because water is critical to human well-being in many ways. Some are irreplaceable—water to drink, water to grow food, and water to sustain the natural systems that provide us with emotional nourishment and a sense of place. But the vast majority of water use by people is as an instrument—for washing, for cooling, for transport . of things that aren’t water. Even for irrigation, the sector responsible for more than threequarters of global water use, water is still a means to an end: we farm to produce food, income, and identity but not for irrigation itself. And we have many more options for maximizing those outputs than we do for developing new water sources. We can get more crop per drop and more watts per drop and find ways to clean, to cool, and to make a living with less, or even no, water. Changing our mindset, our management, and our research to maximize these outputs provides a pathway for creating the future we want. Ensuring that all people have access to safe drinking water is one outcome among many that all people can agree we want to see in the world. Reorganizing our research within academia by focusing on outcomes instead of research topics illuminates novel research questions and previously untapped partners. It moves us beyond the search for technical fixes or silver bullets and instead highlighting the importance of systems, behavior, and solutions. We can’t make more water, but we can get more of what we want from it.
The collective challenges facing Earth are clear. Despite aspirational targets, the what and the why are easier than the how. Conventional thinking and incremental tweaking prevail. Problems are ‘‘solved’’ in isolation. Solving grand challenges requires a mindset that is not risk averse and transcends individual disciplines while not neglecting subject depth. Help can be found in nature-inspired engineering. Evolved over eons, nature is replete with examples of efficiency, scalability, and resilience. Yet, blindly mimicking nature will not solve our problems. Design space and context of nature and technology differ, from relevant timescales to environmental conditions and socio-economics. Hierarchical transport networks that effectively bridge length scales, force balancing, dynamic self-organization, and the modular structure of networks from genes to ecosystems are natural mechanisms that help us focus and guide a design approach that is thematic— not based on isolated observations but rather on universal fundamentals. Such mechanisms underpin the same desirable properties in nature and in the engineering challenges we aim to solve. Nature-inspired concepts that inform designs we can implement within an applied context are extracted. Nature-inspired engineering is proposed as a systematic design methodology for transformative technology. It promotes lateral thinking for responsible innovation contextualized and grounded in scientific fundamentals. Ultimately, the how treasures nature on our one Earth and appreciates that engineering is a humanity.
6 One Earth 1, September 20, 2019