The Blue Economy, by Gunter Pauli
Foreword Achim Steiner,
UN Under-Secretary and UNEP Executive Director
The ideas you are about to encounter are among the
most tantalizing prospects for realizing a low carbon,
resource-efficient economy in the 21st century. It is remarkable that
perhaps some of the greatest opportunities for sustainable jobs will come
from replicating the efficient, zero-waste operation of
ecosystems.
The natural world, in all its splendor and diversity, has already solved
many of the sustainability challenges facing humanity in ingenious,
unexpected, and even counter-intuitive ways. If humans could only unravel
the fascinating chemistry, processes, structures, and designs that
organisms -- from bacteria and mollusks to reptiles and mammals --have
evolved and tested over millennia, perhaps then we would have new and
transformational solutions to the many challenges faced by a planet of
six billion people, rising to over nine billion by 2050.
Gunter Pauli's book, The Blue Economy, opens the door to
this fresh, forward-looking field. The pioneering advances it profiles
will quickly persuade business and government leaders to explore and
develop the cutting-edge sciences at the foundation of these new
developments. It
highlights the innovative work of many, including Emile Ishida (Japan),
Wilhelm Barthlott (Germany), Andrew Parker (UK), Joanna Aizenberg
(Russia/USA), Jorge Alberto Vieira Costa (Brazil), and other front-line
scientists who refused to accept either the conventional wisdom or the
status quo. In featuring their work, The Blue Economy
demonstrates that we can find ways of utilizing physics, chemistry, and
biology just as ecosystems do with renewable materials and sustainable
practices. This is no longer the realm of science-fiction; it is actually
happening here and now. With appropriate policies to support research and
development, and promotional strategies that accomplish their delivery
through market mechanisms, such materials and methods offer abundant
opportunities for accelerating their adaptation to address pressing
global issues.
In turn, widespread adoption of the framework proposed in The Blue
Economy can provide a solid rationale for implementing the agenda
of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the missions of
organizations like UNEP and IUCN. Currently, species are being lost at an
unprecedented rate. Many scientists believe that the world is now
undergoing the sixth wave of extinctions, primarily caused by economic
models and human behavior that undervalue the contributions of species,
habitats, and ecosystems to our lives and the planet's life support
systems.
These species within ecosystems underpin our mega-trillion dollar economy
by providingb essential services at the local, regional, and global
level. Many ecosystem species and processes hold clues for potentially
significant achievements in production of medicine, food crops, biofuels,
and low-energy materials. These could prove to be essential for societal
measures to mitigate or adapt to climate change. Such achievements will
certainly be needed to catalyze new sustainable businesses and industries
to provide decent, sustainable jobs.
For the 100 innovations it describes, The Blue
Economy estimates this employment potential to be on the order of
100 million jobs. The plausibility of this estimate is enhanced by the
fact that there are today more people employed in renewable energies than
in the oil and gas industries combined, and that investment in wind,
solar, and geothermal power generation exceeds investment in new fossil
fuel power plants. Consider a water-collecting system modeled after that
of the Namib Desert beetle.
By 2025, the United Nations forecasts that 1.8 billion people will be
living in countries or regions suffering from water scarcity. Two thirds
of the world's population could be living with conditions of water
stress. Meanwhile, climate change is expected to aggravate water problems
via more extreme weather events. The Namib beetle lives in a location
that receives a mere half inch of rain a year, yet it can harvest water
from fogs that blow in gales across the land several mornings each
month.
Researchers have recently designed a surface that is inspired by the
water-attracting bumps and water-shedding valleys of scales on the
beetle's wings. These scales allow the insect to collect and funnel water
droplets thinner than a human hair. Trials have been conducted using
beetle film to capture water vapor from cooling towers. Initial tests
have shown that this invention can recover 10% of the water lost. This
lowers energy bills for nearby buildings by reducing the heat island
effect. An estimated 50,000 new water-cooling towers are erected annually
and each large system loses over 500 million liters of water per day.
Other researchers are adapting the beetle water collection system to
develop tents that collect their own water as well as surfaces that will
mix reagents for "lab-on-a-chip" applications. Twenty people
are employed on this fledgling development but the true world-wide
potential might be as many as 100,000 new jobs.
The Blue Economy cites a project in Benin where a novel
farming and food-processing systememulates the way an ecosystem
"cascades" nutrients. Animal wastes from the slaughterhouse are
processed in a maggot farm to feed fish and quails; biogas provides
electricity and plants purify water. The project is a microcosm of the
Blue Economy. For the same Dollar, Euro, Rupee, or Yuan it generates, it
produces income, livelihoods, and food security while recycling and
reusing wastes. To date 250 people are employed. There is a potential of
5 million jobs if this cascading model were used in every African
abattoir.
It has been nearly 70 years since Swiss engineer George de Mestral, after
examining the natural hooks on the burdock seeds that stubbornly attached
to his clothes while on a countryside stroll, came up with an invention
we know as Velcro.
More recently, buildings such as a shopping centre in Zimbabwe, a
hospital in Colombia, a school in Sweden, and the Zoological Society of
London are cooled by structures inspired by termite mounds. Meanwhile,
engineering schools around the world are racing to devel
op far more efficient solar power based on the molecules and processes of
photosynthesis. What The Blue Economy emphasizes is the
vast potential of such innovations. It spotlights the tipping point
inherent in the immense number of such breakthroughs currently in the
laboratory, under development, or being commercialized.
The world has been racked by food, fuel, environmental, financial, and
economic crises. Ecosystem and biodiversity loss has led to an emerging
climate crisis and a looming natural resource calamity.
A Blue Economy, able to deal systematically with these many challenges,
and ready to seize the manifest multiple opportunities, is now essential.
Our Earth has always been our greatest resource, and this book cites 100
new reasons why investing in both local and global ecosystem
sustainability is even more valid and central today.
Leonardo da Vinci neatly summed up the power of ecosystems and nature's
material efficiency in his Codex Atlanticus:
"Everything comes from everything, and everything is made of
everything, and everything turns into everything, because that which
exists in the elements is
made up of these elements."
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary and UNEP Executive Director
Ashok Khosla, President of IUCN
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we must create new leaves, in new directions, in order to grow." -
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