|
Biomimicry in Community Planning |
|
|
|
Ecological Performance Standards
By Janine Benyus, Tim McGee, and Sherry Ritter
Think of any city. With each acre developed, almost an acre’s worth of ecosystem services is lost. Roofs reflect sunlight, rather than capturing it for energy. Carbon is released into the atmosphere rather than sequestered in vegetation or soils. Buildings and streets shed rainwater into storm sewers that rush it away, rather than filtering it through wetlands or seeping through soils into ground water.
Now think about that city transformed so that it provides the same ecosystem services as the wild areas surrounding it. This new city fits into the ecosystem. We fit in. This is the basis for ecological performance standards.
Ecological Performance Standards are a new way to incorporate biomimicry into community planning. Basically, Ecological Performance Standards ask human building projects to pull their own ecological weight. Buildings, hardscapes, and landscapes of a community should work together to provide the same level of life-sustaining ecosystem services as an intact native ecosystem.
What's different is that now we're asking our buildings and infrastructure to do their part, instead of asking our green spaces to do ALL our ecosystem services for us. It's the step toward having building projects that not only meet their own needs—they actually give back to the region. Though the city may look very different from the native ecosystem, it should actually function the same way. When cities and ecosystems are functionally indistinguishable, that's when we will have truly mimicked at an ecosystem level. That's when we will be a welcome species.
The Biomimicry Institute's sister company, The Biomimicry Guild, has been working on a development project in India called Lavasa. The goal for Lavasa is a human settlement that actually enhances local ecology by functioning at least as well as a healthy, highly functioning moist deciduous forest. It’s a bold goal, but it’s the first step on the journey to fitting in.
The Guild chose a subset of relevant ecosystem services and described various indicators as measures of whether or not that ecosystem service is functioning. The Ecological Performance Standards set the aspiration goal, then describe how to set up monitoring stations to measure indicators such as gallons of water retained after a monsoon, number of native tree species regenerating, reduction in number of bare spots (soil erosion indicator), millimeters of soil created, etc.
The Lavasa development will also look to the geniuses of the moist deciduous forest—animals, plants, microbes, and systems—to learn from them how to provide these ecosystem services. These will guide innovative design of buildings, hardscapes, and landscapes.
Where possible, the Guild shaped the standards to assist those native species most in need of help, by attempting, for instance, to provide vital corridors for their shelter and migration. It is an immense honor to help support these species as they support us, and the most useful way to thank them for their unpaid services is to set ecological performance standards for ourselves.
|
