How would nature design and implement nature-based solutions?

Abstract

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are gaining momentum as potential solutions to restore, preserve and enhance ecosystem services for societal challenges, in general. In particular they improve ecological, social and economic urban resilience. As nature provides structure and carries out functions in NbS, from a designer's perspective, it is beneficial to explore and understand the strategies and mechanisms that living systems deploy to carry out those functions (ecosystem services) we are looking for. To date, exploration of the biological and ecological domains has mainly been instrumental in answering the question: how does nature provide ecosystem services? This type of broad inquiry, however, may not allow the identification of best practices to set up successful NbS projects. What if the question was: how would nature design and implement NbS? This inquiry falls within the domain of biomimicry. This work mainly aims at introducing the benefits that biomimicry or a biologically-inspired design (BID) approach could bring to address technological barriers and knowledge gaps currently hampering NbS diffusion. The work starts by clarifying if and how bio-inspiration is embedded within the main definitions of NbS (which also lead to determining the official definition of NbS by the European Commission). Furthermore, initial elements are provided to apply a bio-inspired approach to NbS. The approach is demonstrated on three levels:i)Formulation of broad principles/guidelines for NbS (based on Life Principles);ii)Generation of bio-inspired ideas (for green-grey, blue-green infrastructure) and identification of existing bio-inspired solutions which could improve various phases of the NbS project cycle (through multiple inquiries in Asknature.org); andiii)Indication of on-going biomimetic research and development, which could assist in innovating NbS.As the scientific literature seems rather dry on this specific topic, this work, far from being exhaustive, aims to contribute to kick-starting the missing dialogue surrounding NbS and bio-inspiration; a dialogue among the scientific community, as well as among all the actors involved in the NbS project cycle.