Recognizing the Dualism between Humans and Nature is False leads to Sustainable Outcomes: Using Evolution to Minimize Unsustainable Decision-Making
Originally published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/recognizing-dualism-between-humans-nature-false-leads-marcel-harmon/
In his recent article on Greenbiz.com, Why we must design as if we're part of nature, Daniel Christian Wahl pointed out that as biological organisms we are subject to the same forces that impact all other life on our planet. “The cultures we co-create are emergent properties — epiphenomena — of life and of nature. We are intricately interwoven with the bio-geo-physical processes that sustain life on Earth.” In other words the long term viability of our species is tied to the viability of other species, and the state of the physical, biological and social/cultural processes that shape our planet – our collective home.
Whether you use a narrower definition of sustainability as defined in Dr. Wahl’s article – “neutral or 100% less bad” – or take a more comprehensive definition that also includes biomimicry, biophilia, restorative and regenerative design, I would emphatically agree that the distinction often made between nature and human society/culture doesn’t exist. It’s a false dualism, made apparent by comparing certain aspects of human behavior with that of other animals, such as the hermit crab in this case.
Evolutionary forces have shaped the hermit crab’s behavioral repertoire, which includes the species’ adaptive reuse of the best shell or shell-like structure it can find for its mobile home. Evolution has encoded in its DNA the behavioral ability to meticulously inspect such structures looking for the optimal fit and maximum strength and durability, all for the survival and reproduction of its genes, though I’m not discounting the possibility of other levels of selection above the gene also being involved.
But the exact manifestation of any given crab’s behavior will also be influenced by the specific environment it finds itself within, including its social environment. For terrestrial hermit crabs, the relative scarcity of adequate shells compared to their aquatic counterparts has resulted in an evolved form of sociality where these crabs (including non-related ones) will periodically congregate together in what could be called a shell swap meet. But it isn’t what we would think of as a friendly event, as these crabs are aggressively looking for their next upgrade. In the end, one poor soul is often left with a shell that’s really too small to provide effective protection. Nevertheless, this behavior (along with the ability to hollow out shells to increase their volume) has proven to be adaptive for the larger terrestrial hermit crab group.
UC Davis evolutionary biologist Geerat J. Vermeij, in a commentary in Current Biology, made the point that “…living things have been altering and remodeling their surroundings throughout the history of life.” These individual altering and remodeling behaviors are an adaptive response to the physical and social environments that species find themselves within, and further influence their continued evolution. How adaptive the behavior continues to be over time is dependent on many factors, from population growth, to the introduction of other species, to changes in the physical or social environment. And this is true whether we’re talking about hermit crabs or humans.
But humans have a couple of evolutionary adaptations that have allowed us to dominate almost every land based ecosystem on the planet. One of these is our highly social nature – we have a fine-tuned ability, almost a need, to live in groups and effectively cooperate with one another (regardless of relatedness) in the pursuit of common goals (even if that goal is the dominance or destruction of another group).
Another is the huge cache of cultural information available to us as individuals and as larger groups, iteratively built on over millennia (and some of it occasionally lost), transmitted and stored via the spoken and written word, and now electronically in our modern world. Our behaviors relative to a specific environment aren’t determined just by the information encoded in our DNA, but also by the information embedded in our cultural worlds – clothing styles, agricultural practices, social norms of interaction, religious or political rules and ideologies, the scientific method, manufacturing techniques and even the intellectual traditions of the design and construction of our built environments.
While our social nature and cultural tool kits have given us the ability to influence how evolutionary forces act upon us as individuals and as nested groups of ever increasing size, they haven’t made us immune to the forces of evolution that molded us into the species we are today. Just as the shell selecting behaviors, as well as the shell itself, are part of the hermit crab phenotype (the observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the surrounding environment), so are the behaviors of design and construction, as well as the resulting built environments themselves, part of the human phenotype.
And as we’re still subject to the forces of evolution, these adaptations don’t always prove beneficial, depending on the time frame or scale of interactions in question. Our ability to successfully cooperate in the extraction of natural resources, aided by the cultural reservoir of knowledge relevant for a given time and place, can lead to unsustainable outcomes for those outside of the group in question, or for the group itself after a period of time. Over the course of human history this has resulted in negative environmental impacts and the depletion of local resources, contributing to the disbanding of communities or weakening of civilizations. Individuals may have benefited in the short term, but the long term viability of the larger group (and/or outsiders) was negatively impacted.
However, a form of social cooperation has evolved among humans to help avoid this tragedy of the commons phenomenon where common pool resources end up being over exploited. These resources, such as good quality water and air, energy, healthy food, etc., are important for a group’s long term viability, but can be at risk of inequitable access, overuse and/or depletion by individuals and smaller groups. Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist and previous recipient of the Nobel Prize for economics, identified eight design features that allow groups to cooperate in sustainably managing their common pool resources.
Ostrom’s original work focused on smaller communities, more reflective of our hunter/gather ancestors than complex societies with large numbers of nested subgroups. It’s not surprising that she first summarized these design features relative to smaller groups since they solidified as adaptive in the smaller scale human societies of our collective past. But David Sloan Wilson, Elinor Ostrom and Michael E. Cox later discussed how these design features are scalable to larger societies.
I’ll refer the reader to each of the above references for an overview of the design features, and I’ve also discussed them here: The Built Environment’s Social Costs, Part 3: Managing Common Pool Resources and the City Energy Project. The point being that these eight design features, exemplified through such things as a strong group identity, a proportional distribution of costs/benefits, monitoring and transparency, represent part of our behavioral repertoire, part of the human phenotype, that if manifested or deployed under the right physical and social/cultural environmental conditions will result in a more sustainable, and even equitable, use of resources.
Of course this also includes the use of resources in the sustainable design, construction and operations of our built environments. My special publication available from The Evolution Institute, Constructing Our Niches: The Application of Evolutionary Theory to the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) Industry, specifically discusses how evolutionary theory in general, and Ostrom’s eight design features in particular, offer the design/construction industry a way to more consistently create and maintain sustainable, productive, healthy and equitable environments.
One last comment, though this really deserves an entire post in and of itself. If Ostrom’s eight design features had been applied to the Dakota Access Pipeline’s environmental assessment, with the cohesive “group” consisting of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in addition to other U.S. subgroups with more political and economic power, and equitably incorporating other costs/benefits such as the social cost of carbon, it likely wouldn’t have been approved originally (also see The Built Environment’s Social Costs, Part 1: Quantifying Productivity, Health and Larger Societal Costs). Under such a scenario, it’s likely that in general little fossil fuel extraction, processing and distribution would be approved, resulting in a much greater focus on efficiency and renewable energy, perhaps even cold fusion research.
Interestingly many Native American world views also embrace the perspective that humans are an integral part of the natural world. Contrast this with many “modern” Western world views that distinctly separate humans from nature. Evolutionary theory clearly indicates which perspective offers hope for the future. That is, if you hope for a future including a viable human race.