Entrepreneurs
of the Natural World Showcase Their Groundbreaking
Solutions to the Environmental Challenges
of the 21st Century
Nature's 100 Best Initiative
Publishes Preliminary Findings on How to
Green the Global Economy
Ninth Conference of the Parties to the Convention
on Biological Diversity 19-30 May
28 May 2008, Bonn/Geneva/Nairobi - A super-small
pacemaker modeled on the wiring of the humpback
whale's heart and pigment-free colour coatings
from the light-splitting structures of a
peacock's feather are among a range of extraordinary
new eco-breakthroughs emerging from mimicking
nature.
Other commercially-promising
advances, inspired by natural world and
its close to four billion year-old history
of "research and development"
include:
- Vaccines that survive
without refrigeration based on Africa's
'resurrection' plant.
- Friction-free surfaces suitable for modern
electrical devices gleaned from the slippery
skin of the Arabian Peninsula's sandfish
lizard.
- New antibacterial substances inspired
by marine algae found off Australia's coast
that promise a new way of defeating health
hazardous bugs without contributing to the
threat of increasing bacterial resistance.
- Toxic-free fire retardants, based on waste
citrus and grape crops inspired by the way
animal cells turn food into energy without
producing flames - the so called citric
acid or Krebs cycle.
- A pioneering water harvesting system to
recycle steam from cooling towers and allowing
buildings to collect their own water supplies
from the air inspired by the way the Namib
Desert Beetle of Namibia harvests water
from desert fogs.
- Biodegradable, water-tight packaging and
water-repellant linings for pipes to tents
that mimic the Australian water-holding
frog.
These are just some of inventions, innovations
and ideas at the centre of a new collaborative
initiative called Nature's 100 Best.
The initiative is the brainchild of the
Biomimicry Guild and the Zero Emission Research
and Initiatives (ZERI) in partnership with
the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and
IUCN-the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature.
It is aimed at showcasing
how tomorrow's economy can be realized today
by learning, copying and mimicking the way
nature has already solved many of the technological
and sustainability problems confronting
humankind. According to Janine Benyus and
Gunter Pauli, co-creators of the Nature's
100 Best project, "Life solves its
problems with well-adapted designs, life-friendly
chemistry, and smart material and energy
use. What better models could there be?"
The Nature's 100 Best
List, a mixture of innovations at various
stages of commercialization from the drawing
board to imminent arrival in the marketplace,
is set to be completed by October 2008 in
time for the IUCN Congress in Barcelona,
Spain. The Nature's 100 Best book will be
published in May 2009.
Today the collaborators
and partners unveiled some of the preliminary
projects and products being included on
Nature's 100 Best from an original list
over 2,000.
It coincides with the
ministerial part of the Convention on Biological
Diversity meeting taking place in Bonn,
Germany where up to 6,000 delegates and
over 190 governments are meeting to slow
the rate of loss of biodiversity.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General
and UNEP Executive Director, said: "Biomimicry
is a field whose time has come. Anyone doubting
the economic and development value of the
natural world need only sift through the
extraordinary number of commercially promising
inventions now emerging-inventions that
are as a result of understanding and copying
nature's designs and the superior way in
which living organisms successfully manage
challenges from clean energy generation
to re-using and recycling wastes".
"There are countless
reasons why we must accelerate the international
response and the flow of funds to counter
rapidly eroding biodiversity and rapidly
degrading ecosystems: Nature's 100 Best
gives us 100 extra reasons to act and 100
extra reasons why better managing biodiversity
is not a question of aid or an economic
burden but an issue of investing in the
non-polluting businesses, industries and
jobs of the near future," he said.
Janine Benyus, head
of the Biomimicry Guild added, "Biomimicry
is science at the cutting edge of the 21st
century economy and based on 3.8 billion
years of evolution. Indeed the way nature
makes novel substances; generates energy
and synthesizes unique structures are the
secrets to how humans can survive and thrive
on this planet."
Gunter Pauli, head of
the Zeri Foundation based in Geneva, added:
"Steam and coal transformed the 19th
century; telecommunications and electronics,
the 20th. We are now on the edge of a biologically-based
revolution and in some of the inventions
showcased under this new initiative will
undoubtedly be the business models for the
new Googles, Welcomes, Unilevers and General
Electrics of the modern age. With over one
billion Euros already invested in the most
important technologies this is a trend in
innovation for industry to follow"
he said.
Humpback Heart Pacemakers
Over 350,000 people in the United States
alone are fitted with new or replacement
pacemakers annually. The cost of fitting
a new device is up to $50,000 per patient.
Enter Jorge Reynolds,
Director of the Whale Heart Satellite Tracking
Program in Colombia, whose research is unraveling
the mysteries of how the Humpack's 2,000-pound
heart pumps the equivalent of six bath tubs
of oxygenated blood through a circulatory
system 4,500 times as extensive as a human's.
The work is also pinpointing
how this is achieved even at very low rates
of three to four beats a minute and how
the electrical stimulation is achieved through
a mass of blubber that shields the whale's
heart from the cold.
The researchers have,
through listening devices called echocardiographs
and via autopsies on dead whales, discovered
nano-sized 'wires' that allow electrical
signals to stimulate heart beats even through
masses of non-conductive blubber.
The scientists believe
the findings could be the key to allowing
the human heart to work without a battery-powered
pacemaker and to stimulate optimal heart
beats by by-passing or 'bridging' dead heart
muscle via special whale-like wiring.
The world-wide market
for pacemakers is expected to reach $3.7
billion by 2010. The new invention could
cost just a few cents to make; reduce the
number of follow-up operations because it
avoids the need to install new batteries
and thus supplant the traditional pacemaker.
"Resurrection Plant"
Two million children die from vaccine-preventable
diseases like measles, rubella and whooping
cough each year. By some estimates, breakdowns
in the refrigeration chain from laboratory
to village means half of all vaccines never
get to patients.
Enter Myrothamnus flabellifolia
- a plant found in Central and Southern
Africa whose tissues can be dried to a crisp
and then revived without damage, courtesy
of a sugary substance produced in its cells
during drought.
And enter Bruce Roser,
a biomedical researcher who along with colleagues
recently founded Cambridge Biostability
Ltd to develop fridge-free vaccines based
on the plant's remarkable sugars called
trehaloses.
The product involves
spraying a vaccine with the trehalose coating
to form inert spheres or sugary beads that
can be packaged in an injectable form and
can sit in a doctor's bag for months or
even years.
Trials are underway
with the Indian company Panacea Biotech
and agreements have also been signed with
Danish and German companies.
The development, based
on mimicking nature, could lead to savings
of up to $300 million a year in the developing
world while cutting the need for kerosene
and photovoltaic powered fridges.
Other possibilities
include new kinds of food preservation up
to the storage of animal and human tissues
that by-pass storage in super cold liquid
nitrogen.
Slippery Lizard
The two main ways of reducing friction in
mechanical and electrical devices are ball
bearings and silicon carbide or ultra nano-crystalline
diamond.
One of the shortcomings
of silicon carbide is that it is manufactured
at temperatures of between 1,600 and 2,500
degrees F - in other words it is energy
intensive involving the burning of fossil
fuels.
The synthetic diamond
product can be made at lower temperatures
and coated at temperatures of 400 degrees
F for a range of low friction applications.
But it has drawbacks too.
Enter the shiny Sandfish
lizard that lives in the sands of North
Africa and the Arabian Peninsula and enter
a team from the Technical University of
Berlin.
Studies indicate that
the lizard achieves its remarkable, friction-free
life by making a skin of keratin stiffened
by sugar molecules and sulphur.
The lizard's skin also
has nano-sized spikes. It means a grain
of Sahara sand rides atop 20,000 of these
spikes spreading the load and providing
negligible levels of friction.
Further tests indicate
that the ridges on the lizard skin may also
be negatively charged, effectively repelling
the sand grains so they float over the surface
rather like a hovercraft over water.
The researchers have
teamed up with colleagues at the Science
University of Berlin and a consortium of
three German companies to commercialize
the lizard skin findings.
The market is potentially
huge, including in micro-electronic-mechanical
systems where a biodegradable film made
from the relatively cheap materials of kerotene
and sugar and manufactured at room temperature
offers an environmentally-friendly "unique
selling proposition."
Superbugs and Bacterial
Resistance - Australian Red Algae to the
Rescue?
Seventy per cent of all human infections
are a result of biofilms.
These are big congregations
of bacteria that require 1,000 times more
antibiotic to kill them and are leading
to an 'arms race' between the bugs and the
pharmaceutical companies.
It is also increasing
antibiotic resistance and the rise of 'super
bugs' like methicillin resistant Staphylococcus
aureus that now kills more people than die
of AIDS each year.
Enter Delisea pulchra,
a feathery red alga or seaweed found off
the Australian coast and a team including
researchers at the University of New South
Wales.
During a marine field
trip, scientists noticed that the algae's
surface was free from biofilms despite living
in waters laden with bacteria.
Tests pinpointed a compound
- known as halogenated furanone - that blocks
the way bacteria signal to each other in
order to form dense biofilm groups.
A company called Biosignal
has been set up to develop the idea which
promises a new way of controlling bacteria
like golden staph, cholera, and legionella
without aggravating bacterial resistance.
Products include contact
lenses, catheters, and pipes treated with
algae-inspired furanones alongside mouthwashes
and new therapies for vulnerable patients
with diseases like cystic fibrosis and urinary
tract infections.
The bacterial signal-blocking
substance may also reduce pollution to the
environment by reducing or ending the need
for homeowners and companies to pour tons
of caustic chemicals down pipes, ducts and
tanks and onto kitchen surfaces to keep
them bug-free.
Beetle-Based Water Harvesting
By 2025, the United Nations forecasts that
1.8 billion people will be living in countries
or regions with water scarcity and two thirds
of the world's population could be under
conditions of water stress.
Climate change is expected
to aggravate water problems via more extreme
weather events. Many intelligent and improved
management options can overcome these challenges
and one may rest on the extraordinary ability
of the Namib Desert beetle.
The beetle lives in
a location that receives a mere half an
inch of rain a year yet can harvest water
from fogs that blow in gales across the
land several mornings each month.
Enter a team from the
University of Oxford and the UK defense
research firm QinetiQ. They have designed
a surface that mimics the water-attracting
bumps and water-shedding valleys on the
beetle's wing scales that allows the insect
to collect and funnel droplets thinner than
a human hair.
The patchwork surface
hinges on small, poppy-seed sized glass
spheres in a layer of warm wax that tests
show work like the beetle's wing scales.
Trials have now been
carried out to use the beetle film to capture
water vapour from cooling towers. Initial
tests have shown that the invention can
return 10 per cent of lost water and lead
to cuts in energy bills for nearby buildings
by reducing a city's heat sink effect.
An estimated 50,000
new water-cooling towers are erected annually
and each large system evaporates and loses
over 500 million litres.
Other researchers, some
with funding from the US Defense Advanced
Research Agency, are mimicking the beetle
water collection system to develop tents
that collect their own water up to surfaces
that will 'mix' reagents for 'lab-on-a-chip'
applications.
Notes to Editors
Nature's 100 Best is a compilation of 2,100
of the most extraordinary technologies and
strategies found in nature that are being
mimicked or deserve mimicking.
The 100 Best List will
be launched at the IUCN World Conservation
Congress in Barcelona, Spain in October
2008.
At the same time the
Biomimicry Institute will unveil AskNature.org,
an online database of biological knowledge
organized by engineering function in order
to engage and inspire entrepreneurs and
investors.
Zeri www.zeri.org
Biomimicry Guild and
Institute www.biomimicryguild.com, www.biomimicryinstitute.com
UNEP www.unep.org
IUCN www.iucn.org
Ninth Conference of the Parties to the Convention
for Biological Diversity in Bonn www.cbd.int
Case studies from today's preliminary launch
and more details on Nature's 100 Best at
www.n100best.org
The book will be available through www.chelseagreen.com
For More Information Please Contact
Nick Nuttall, Spokesperson/Head of Media,
UNEP
