Post by account_disabled on Mar 12, 2024 3:49:43 GMT -5
When cities function like forests, sustainable development will come
Pollution is one of the priorities for companies and governments; The priority is to eradicate it.
For this reason, El País took on the task of interviewing the biologist Manuel Quirós Galdón (Málaga 1962) at the Center for Innovation in Technology for Human Development (itdUPM).
Quirós is considered the Spanish apostle France Mobile Number List of Biomimicry, a way of protecting the environment through healthy consumption habits.
The expert says that there is still much to do to eradicate pollution, however it is necessary to find solutions to the current unsustainable model.
According to Quirós, the word biomimesis comes from the etymologies 'bio', from the Greek, which means life, and 'mimesis', or emulate, imitate, not copy.
In addition, it tries to study the strategies of living organisms, their forms, processes, mechanisms, systems, etc., to apply them in any human discipline or sector. Nature has simply already done it and solved it in its more than 3.8 billion years of existence on Earth. As humans, our time on the planet represents just 0.01% and therefore we have to calm our sapiens wisdom and embrace the geniuses that surround us. We are a very young species which indicates that we are not evolving well, especially in the last 150 years. Our relationship with nature is established as a source of resources, a food warehouse and a gigantic landfill. It is our only home and plants, fungi, animals, bacteria... are today's architects, engineers and designers. From biomimicry we learn "with" nature and not only "from" it.
For him, «cities are our great creation, our ecosystem and the pinnacle of civilization, but we do not realize that we are completely dependent on the ecosystem services that nature provides us because none of them are produced in cities.
The quality of air, water, productive soils, clean and nearby energy, local materials, zero waste, eliminating the illusion of a linear economy and embracing circularity, increasing biodiversity, dematerializing well-being, collaborationism, etc., These are just some aspects that we in cities must design and develop, since we have never before experienced a change in climate due to the alteration of the atmosphere, the problem of pollutants on a global scale, the depletion of resources, among others.
Manuel Quiros
Manuel Quiros
"Sustainable development will come when cities function like forests providing the ecosystem services that we have now lost and long to recover."
According to him, signs are being given in Europe to move towards sustainability, which represents an opportunity for the continent but the actions are not enough.
«Each sector must advance and thus the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are another great vehicle to incorporate them into the DNA of society, to take steps. This must be the century of doing, of action.
Biomimicry, Quirós says, contains a cure of humility for human beings, “Absolutely. When we analyze that we have been on Earth for such a short time compared to other living beings, we realize that we are not the pinnacle of innovation. We live surrounded by millions of natural geniuses who have survived cataclysms or mass extinctions.
We must attribute some cool characteristic to them, right? We are a very young species and as such we have to rethink our own intelligence and realize that we are not evolving well, that we are not the brightest, nor the most intelligent, at least for now. The progress that a few of us enjoy has a high environmental and social cost that can lead to premature extinction as a species.
The world that the next generations, our children and grandchildren, will face will not look anything like the one we inherited. All this has happened in just 150 years and everything can return to balance again.