Activism and Biomimicry
Written by Beth Remmes
At Georgia Interfaith Power and Light’s 2024 Green Team Summit, I was grateful for the opportunity to facilitate a workshop on “Activism and Biomimicry: How to Build Resilient and Regenerative Movements Using Life’s Principles.”
Activism I defined as when an individual or group actively engages in causes that seek to create positive change in society. What is perceived as positive is subjective, as evidenced by the plethora and diversity of causes across the globe. However, using biomimicry, which is defined as “the conscious emulation of nature’s genius,” positive means “creating conditions conducive to life for the human and more-than-human worlds.” Approaching activism through the lens of biomimicry, we look to Life’s Principles for guidance on how to design resilient and regenerative movements.
Only 0.1 percent of species that have ever lived on Earth survive today, so the species that evolved over 3.85 billion years and still exist, must have effective strategies for how to survive and thrive on Earth. As the researchers at Biomimicry 3.8 and many other collaborators studied millions of species from amoebas to zebras, deep patterns emerged. Biomimicry practitioners named these patterns Life’s Principles, and they represent the strategies that nature has used to sustain life on Earth for billions of years. There are six main principles and twenty-one sub-principles that when taken together, are a lesson on how to integrate nature’s genius into human designs (Baumeister 2014).
Using Life's Principles worksheets, workshop participants discussed nature's strategies for how to Adapt to Changing Conditions and Be Locally Attuned and Responsive to help design a holistic framework for their project or organization. Below you will find further suggestions for these strategies, as well as ideas for all twenty-seven of Life’s Principles.
Evolve To Survive
Movements have to change their tactics in order to survive the often repressive responses from decision-makers and the power holders and also continuously find creative ways to engage people who are current or possible participants in the movement.
Replicate Strategies That Work
Civil disobedience, nonviolence, and interrupting resources of the pillars of support are all proven strategies that have worked over the last 100 years, yet they require different levels of engagement.
From 1900 to 2006, nonviolent campaigns worldwide were twice as likely to succeed outright as violent insurgencies. This trend has been increasing over time so that in the last 50 years, nonviolent campaigns are becoming increasingly successful and common, whereas violent insurgencies are becoming increasingly rare and unsuccessful.
No single campaign has failed during that time period after they had achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5% of the population…and every single campaign that surpassed that 3.5% was a nonviolent one (TEDx Talks and Chenoweth).
Integrate the Unexpected
The genetic “mistake” of wrinkles on elephants and white fur on arctic foxes turned out to be beneficial adaptations. This is a good reminder to not let perfection be the enemy of the good and to see if mistakes in your movement space can provide a surprising benefit or be turned into a successful adaptation?
Reshuffle Information
The cross-pollination of movements and organizers can lead to synergy and emergence. Just as in nature, where biodiversity leads to a greater number of possibilities for organisms to work together and evolve, diverse groups in a movement can learn from each other, and whole new strategies can emerge that would likely not have happened if they did not interact.
Example: Gopher Tortoise, Gopherus Polyphemus
Be Resourceful with Material and Energy
Activists often cooperate with other organizers when planning an action and combine actions and recruitment efforts because this leads to less energy expended for both organizers and participants. For example, the Women’s March in 2017 was organized by a diverse group of women, and related recruitment efforts led to a record number of first-time female candidates seeking office in the 2018 elections.
Fit Form to Function
Know your audience and tailor your communication strategies and activities in a way that has the best chance of reaching them and inspiring action.
Use Multi-functional Design
When designing an action, think about what other goals could be accomplished at the event. Maybe you will also want to gather names for a database, signatures for a petition, or funds for the organization.
Use Low Energy Processes
The V formation of a flock of geese, in which they take turns leading, is the most energy-efficient way to travel long distances. How can you use less energy and share leadership so that you are sustained for long-term commitment to activism?
Recycle All Materials
Creating content is a labor-intensive task for many organizations. Keep an organized and easy to navigate shared drive that members can access and harvest to create flyers, blogs, and social media posts.
Example: Spanish Moss, Tillandsia Usneoides
Be Locally Attuned and Responsive
If an outside organizer is coming into a community, they need to hold listening sessions so that they can respond to the local concerns and issues - which will lead to more engagement and a higher likelihood of success.
Leverage Cyclic Processes
If activists are using the Pillars of Support strategy and are looking for places to intervene, it is important to know and plan around the schedule for legislative sessions and corporate/shareholder board meetings.
Use Readily Available Materials and Energy
Cultivate a strong volunteer network and reach out to local schools to see if there are any interns available who want to help your organization in exchange for class credit.
Cultivate Cooperative Relationships
It is important to create partnerships as they can lead to a shared network of resources - such as money, people, skills, and spaces. Systems change dramatically because of changing interconnections, functions, or purpose (Meadows, 2008). When people work together, they help to create new dynamics in the system, which can be critical to helping leverage points to shift.
Use Feedback Loops
There are many mobile canvassing applications, such as miniVAN, that allow for real-time feedback about who potential voters plan to support and what issues are important to them. Organizers can quickly review the data coming in and upload it into the database so that they can modify their message if need be.
The holistic accounting practice of creating an Environmental Profit and Loss (EP& L) statement brings externalities back into the business so that the actual impact of the product’s life cycle and the business’s operations on the planet can be measured, which creates a balancing feedback loop.
Example: Great Blue Heron, Ardea Herodias
Integrate Development with Growth
Rapid growth is not always healthy for an organization, and it is worth remembering that nature seeks to optimize, rather than maximize. Look for ways to strengthen and develop your team so that you are resilient as you expand your organization.
Self-Organize
Like nature’s communities of ants, termites, and bees, movements are the most resilient when they are “leaderful,” meaning that leadership is decentralized in a network with participants making the next best decision in the moment rather than relying on one leader.
Build from the Bottom Up
The second principle in Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing is Emphasis on Bottom-Up Organizing. It says, “To succeed, it is important to reach out into new constituencies, and to reach within all levels of leadership and membership base of the organizations that are already involved in our networks. We must be continually building and strengthening a base which provides our credibility, our strategies, mobilizations, leadership development, and the energy for the work we must do daily.”
Combine Modular and Nested Components
Many organizations, such as Interfaith Power & Light and The Sierra Club have national, state, and local chapters. The national and state chapters have more complexity, especially when it comes to resources, and local chapters are often made up of volunteers who are able to respond to local issues quickly.
Example: Pond Cypress, Taxodium Ascendens
Adapt to Changing Conditions
Studying the process of succession in an ecosystem can help new organizations realize that there will likely be a similar trajectory to their work, and their strategies will need to change with each stage. They perceive that there is a gap in the system, and their offering will fill a new niche. The first ones on board are similar to a pioneer species, they are going to work hard and figure out how to survive in the harsh conditions of a new organization and all the challenges that come with a start-up. As they start to grow, they may be a perceived threat to take away resources from similar organizations, and they may feel like they need to compete for a space in this field. If they make it through these stages, they will start to form relationships with other organizations and will cycle nutrients - such as information, resources, and possibly personnel. Eventually, their organization will stabilize and be part of a diverse community that enriches the system.
At a biomimicry workshop, participants were inspired by forest organisms that coevolve through stages of increasingly complex and interdependent relationships, and they suggested that a global philanthropic foundation shift its focus from making individual grants to forming connections among its diverse network of grantees - like the way mycelial fungal networks beneath the forest floor link trees, shrubs, and understory plants with necessary nutrients and information. This would drive coevolution rather than competition, and the network would increase resilience in the system.
Incorporate Diversity
As Chenoweth discovered, nonviolent campaigns were often much more diverse in terms of gender, age, race, political party, class, and urban-rural distinction and therefore attracted more people and were more likely to be successful.
Maintain Integrity Through Self-Renewal
Activists who spend much of their time working on holding back and slowing down the damage to the Earth and her inhabitants are at a high risk of burnout. It is slow, difficult work, and they don’t always see direct results of their actions. There are a growing number of wellness practitioners entering this space to offer practices such as yoga, meditation, breathwork, nature connection, and somatic exercises to help activists feel re-energized to continue to find ways to intervene in the system and create a regenerative world where all beings can thrive.
Embody Resilience through Variation, Redundancy, and Decentralization
The well-known marketing rule of seven is that you need to reach people at least seven times before they will act. With social media, there are many channels and opportunities for organizers to get their message and event information out to the public. Apps like Signal are especially popular in activist communities because messages are encrypted, which adds a layer of security.
In addition, actions are often planned in multiple locations. For example, 350.org promotes global days of action that link activists and organizations around the world.
Example: Monarch Butterflies, Danaus Plexippus
Use Life-Friendly Chemistry
Biomimicry Professionals generally avoid interpreting Use Life Friendly Chemistry, and the sub-principles conceptually because they are too important to a design to be abstracted, and need to be taken literally when assessing a business. However, in the case of Activism, Biomimicry for Social Innovation, has a metaphorical approach that we can use.
Employ Elegant Processes
Build partnerships like legos; they should easily fit together and can be reconfigured if need be.
Build Selectively with a Small Subset of Elements
Aim for simplicity and use only the components that you need to accomplish a specific goal.
Do Chemistry in and with Water
Create a “non-toxic” environment and when personal challenges inevitably arise, don’t let them stagnate. Let them flow through and disperse the residual effects.
Break Down into Benign and Useful Constituents
If we need to disassemble partnerships or programs, it needs to be done in a way that ensures completion and causes no harm.
Example: Hooded Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia Minor
Nature models social innovation incredibly well. It is up to each of us to listen and learn from the natural world in order to make our environmental justice movements as effective as possible. Inspired by nature’s strategies, we may learn how to be a regenerative rather than destructive force on this planet.
References:
Baumeister, D. (2014). Biomimicry resource handbook : a seed bank of best practices. Biomimicry 3.8.
Meadows, D. (2008). Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.
TEDx Talks, and Erica Chenoweth. “The Success of Nonviolent Civil Resistance: Erica Chenoweth at TEDxBoulder.” YouTube, 4 Nov. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w
