WOW Ways of How Nature Initiates Significant Change

This article is written as part of the application to become part of the Thousand Network. One of the pieces they ask for is to WOW them, by demonstrating your skills, telling a story, sharing something you love or showing a personality trait. I decided to write an article on the use of Biomimicry, since I believe it is still an under-appreciated or at least an underused tool for sustainable innovation. Specifically, I wanted to explore how we can learn from nature to become even more powerful and effective change makers. And since not only Thousand networkers can benefit from this, I decided to post the article on Medium and share what I learn with anyone interested. Hope it inspired you to be a positively impacting ecosystem engineer.

Humans are only one out of a possible 1,000,000,000,000 (that’s a trillion) different species living on earth. Although we like to believe we are the most clever and thus the best ones at innovation, there is a growing number of people who believe there is a tremendous amount of knowledge in nature that is available for us to learn from. Knowing that we are still so young: humans were born on the last half hour of the last day of the year, on a 1-year calendar representing earth’s entire history. The Industrial Revolution only took place in the last 2 seconds. Innovation is clearly not something humans invented.

If you haven’t heard about Biomimicry before, I would highly recommend watching this 17 min TED video by Janine Benyus, the author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.

Thousand Networkers are appreciated for being change makers. It is indeed the reason why I would love to call myself a Thousand networker. Although I believe humans can effectively initiate change, I wanted to explore what we can learn from nature to becoming even better, more natural change makers.

In biology we call a change maker an Ecosystem Engineer. They are organisms that create or significantly modify a habitat, and thus have a large impact on the species richness and landscape of that area. These pioneering species can significantly impact their environment in two different ways:

i) Change the environment directly — called allogenic engineers; e.g beavers and elephants

ii) Change itself, which indirectly affects the environment — called autogenic engineers; e.g. trees and coral

Beavers

By clear-cutting and damming beavers extensively alter their ecosystem and increase species richness. Their dams have multiple effects on stream hydrology. They even out the seasonal pulses of runoff; store water for recharging the water table; and provide cold, shaded water for fish. This allows for willow tree growth, which in turn provide habitat for songbirds. Behind the beaver dam, a pond of still water is formed, which is colonized by animals and plants that typically live in lakes rather than streams. Beavers cut down certain specific trees for food and for building their dams and thus after many years the forest beside a beaver pond is usually dominated by different tree species than it was before beaver occupation.

Beaver engineering also includes lodge making and canal digging, providing covering for certain fish. The specific effects beavers have on populations of birds, amphibians, reptiles, invertebrates, trees and humans is so complex I cannot go into detail, but if interested they are described on this website.

If you prefer watching instead of reading (like me), here is a 4 min video where you can see the beaver, amongst many other species at work in one interconnected network of Yellowstone National Park. It beautifully shows the real cascading power of an ecosystem and its engineering species.

Elephants

Elephants dig deep holes to mine nutrient-rich water, and this way making scarce resources available for other smaller animals. These wells create microhabitats for many creatures like frogs that lay their eggs in the water.

Elephants need to eat A LOT, and they can eat almost any plants — even thorny ones. Thanks to their nutrient-rich, fibrous poop (only about 50% of what they eat is actually digested) they are considered one of the best gardeners.

Many species feed on elephant dung, including ground hornbills, banded mongooses, velvet monkeys, baboons and many insect species. It’s even so important for one that it gains its name from it: the dung beetle.

Their dung is also the perfect way to disperse seeds over long distances. By eating bark from trees it creates nests for birds. Elephants stand on their tiptoes to reach the very high branches of protein rich acacia trees, and the spillovers create a feast for nearby wildlife, including warthogs, kudu, baboons, and rodents.

Elephants can also be considered construction engineers, as they alter and modify habitats by pushing over trees, stripping bark from trees and stomping around. They transform woodlands into open savanna, creating grazing habitat for dozens of grassland species. When they move on, the savanna grows into scrubs for a host of browsing animals and then once more becomes woodland.

Fig trees

Fig trees are considered autogenic ecosystem engineers of the rainforest because they take up resources from their environment, and their growth ultimately creates habitats for other organisms to live on or in. The enormous fig trees explode with sweet, rich fruit, and attract countless tropical epiphytes, insects, spiders, birds, primates, lichens, and various rainforest mammals. A dense superhighway of fungal mycelium grows below the fig trees, shuttling rare nutrients between roots of neighboring trees. Together, tree hubs and fungi survive and thrive, feeding an entire ecosystem of interconnected creatures in the process.

This beautiful award-wining 26 min documentary shows one of these important mutualistic relationships in detail. The fig flowers are pollinated by fig wasps that crawl through the opening in search of a suitable place to lay its eggs. The fig flowers provide a safe haven and nourishment for the next generation of wasps, while the wasps make seed pollination possible for the figs. They live so closely together that it is one of biology’s wonders of co-evolution.

Humans are definitely also ecosystem engineers. We are even thought to be one of the most dramatic ecosystem engineers. Through urban development and activities, agricultural practices, logging, damming and mining, humans have changed their environment both directly and indirectly. Unfortunately, our human activities have disrupted or even destroyed many existing ecosystems. Its up to us, and only us, to become the good kind of ecosystem engineers that increases species diversity and richness and develop stable ecosystem conditions that make other species flourish.

Thousand networkers are the good kind of ecosystem engineers, and in this article I want to explore if examples of ecosystem engineers from nature can inform us how we can initiate significantly positive change and become even more effective ecosystem engineers.

Here are several natural strategies abstracted from the examples discussed above

1. Trigger changes in movement of resources

Beavers’ dams cause changes in the flow of river, providing microhabitats for certain species. As humans we can also trigger changes in the movement of resources. For example, by organizing network events you can initiate interaction between individuals, which perhaps results in unexpected partnerships. Another resource could be ideas: in daily lives, you get exposed to so many good ideas or opportunities but one cannot keep track of them. What if you assemble them and make a place to visualize those, so others can pick them up more easily? Think about what kind of resources are flowing by at unmanageable speed, and how you might be able to make create changes to the movement of these flows.

2. Make scarce resources available

In all of the examples these ecosystem engineers are responsible for making scarce resources available. What kind of scarce resources do you have access to that you could provide for others, knowing that they could use them for beneficial outcomes? Perhaps you can make a warm invitation to one of your connections, or perhaps you know of a foundation that is seeking for good ideas, or do you know of a job opportunity that looks like a good fit for someone you know? Whatever it is, it doesn’t cost you much for sharing it with others!

3. Create a safe environment for others

Even though you might be surprised that others would consider your “poop” as a safe and nutrient-rich environment, it might make all the difference for others. What can you offer to others to make them feel empowered? It might be a couch to stay the night, a seat next to you at your workspace, or sharing a cup of coffee to provide someone with confidence to go after his or her business idea.

4. Build beneficial relationships with other keystone species

In nature, real change is usually not the result from one keystone species, but the mutual effort of two or more highly connected keystone species. Finding a supportive buddy will most of the times benefit you both and increase your chances on success. Don’t be a solo-entrepreneur because you want to have the sole credits; your impact will be significantly larger when collaborating with others.

5. Take something others cannot reach/use to provide something back that is useful to others

In nature, many species are looking for those resources that are unavailable for others because there is much less competition for it. However, in most cases these actions will provide another resource in return or they will make the previously unavailable resource available to others.

Can you think of ways to share a resource that is only accessible to you? For example, perhaps you have much higher chances of receiving a grant, but you could split it with others who can help you with an impactful project. Or you could you set up a meeting with an important influencer, and invite your friend to come along. What about mentioning a new promising startup in your next newsletter that will be send out to your network of influencers?

6. Create products that help disperse ideas over long distances

In nature the appearance of seeds allowed pollution over long distances. However, often they require the work of pollinators like bees or wasps to carry the seeds with them to new places.

Don’t try to protect your ideas from others, because they might never reach the vital person or fruitful habitat. Also, think about ways to make ideas more easily spreadable. Can you build a platform for others to access change making ideas, projects or people? What about building a community of influencers via a newsletter outreach? Spend time to identifying the best suitable delivery product and system for your specific ideas. Don’t hope someone would accidently pick it up.

“We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.” — Albert Einstein