The central challenge of our new century will be to build and develop sustainable communities in which we can satisfy our needs and aspirations without diminishing the opportunities of future generations. This is an important moral exhortation. It reminds us of our responsibility to bequeath to our children and grandchildren a world with as many opportunities as we have inherited. A sustainable community is designed so that life forms, businesses, physical structures and technologies do not interfere with nature's inherent ability to sustain life.
However, this definition tells us nothing about how to build a sustainable community. What we need is a working definition of ecological sustainability.
Key to this operational definition is the realization that we don't have to invent sustainable human communities from scratch. We just need to adjust them to nature's ecosystems which are, at their core, sustainable communities of plants, animals and microorganisms that have evolved over billions of years to always sustain life. Therefore, a sustainable human community must be designed so that its ways of life, businesses, physical structures and technologies do not interfere with nature's ability to sustain life.
Perception change
Undoubtedly, the transition to a sustainable economy offers tremendous opportunities for companies. It will require completely new infrastructure - fuel cells, solar power plants and wind turbines, hydrogen pipelines and refueling stations, etc. The development of this infrastructure will require the inclusion of several intermediate stages for which different scenarios have been proposed. There is plenty of room for innovation and competition, and companies that are gearing up for the future hydrogen economy are likely to gain a decisive competitive advantage.
However, the critical issue is not technology, but politics and leadership. The great challenge of the 21st century will be to change the value system that underpins the global economy in order to make it compatible with the demands of human dignity and ecological sustainability. This will be the new "game", entirely sustainable, of the world economy.
Ecological knowledge and ecological design
The first step in our endeavor to build sustainable communities is to acquire "ecological knowledge" ("eco-literacy"), that is, to understand the organizing principles that ecosystems have evolved to sustain the web of life. These are the basic principles of ecology - for example, the remains (waste) of one species are the food of another; matter circulates continuously through the web of life; the sun's energy drives all ecological cycles; diversity ensures resilience; life, since its beginnings more than three billion years ago, has occupied the entire planet through the formation of cooperative networks.
In the 21st century, ecological knowledge will become an essential skill for politicians, business leaders and professionals from all walks of life. And it should be the most important part of education at all levels.
The second step is to move from ecological knowledge to ecological design ("ecodesign"). We need to apply our ecological knowledge to the fundamental restructuring of our technologies and social institutions to bridge the gap between human design and nature's sustainable systems.
The concept, in its broadest sense, is to shape the flows of energy and matter for human purposes. Ecological design is a design in which our human ends are carefully intertwined with the broader patterns and flows of the natural world. The principles of ecological design reflect the organizing principles that nature has evolved to sustain the web of life. The practice of the industrial concept in such a context requires a fundamental change in our attitude to nature. It requires us to move from discovering what we can extract from nature to discovering what we can learn from it.
In recent years, there has been a significant increase, now well documented, in ecologically oriented practices and concepts. This phenomenon includes, for example, the worldwide renaissance of organic agriculture; the organization of different companies in ecological communities, in which the waste of one organization serves as a resource for another; the shift from a product-based economy to a "service-and-flow" economy, in which industrial raw materials and components continuously circulate between manufacturers, customers and users, and finally, the development of efficient hydrogen fuel cells that promise usher in a new era in energy production - the "hydrogen economy". A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that combines hydrogen with oxygen to produce water, electricity and nothing else! Therefore, hydrogen is the clean and unique fuel.
Fritjof Capra is a doctor of physics, complex systems theorist and author of "The Tao of Physics", "The Web of Life" and "Hidden Connections", among others.