The Covid 19 Pandemic tested our individual and collective resilience. While we are learning to adapt, it has shed light on emerging global goals in economies, climate, and other domains, leaving much work to be desired.

As policymakers, already faced with the tall task of meeting our Sustainable Development Goals, we are further challenged by the Covid 19 Pandemic. The alarms about Climate Change sounded louder than ever throughout the whole world, especially as we saw parts of Nature healing in our “absence”. While we step back into our lives, one resounding takeaway is that we must create, with intention and forethought, truly diverse, sustainable, and smart ecosystems. We need methods that are naturally positive, economy-positive, and people-positive to enable their integration and to actualize sustainability from local to global scales.

During the pandemic, I saw the rise of a new phenomenon, the #staycation, where many fellow Bangaloreans packed up for a short stay in the midst of nature. As an engineer, I often find myself looking for inspiration. Like staycationers and artists, engineers too have tapped into a whole new world of innovative solutions through nature’s time-tested strategies and patterns.

Here are some examples where taking the innovations that exist in nature and applying them to technology, tackled some of the issues of our current world. The wings of the rose butterfly inspired a new type of solar cell that is twice as efficient at harvesting light.  While Geckos inspired super climbing; whales helped us achieve aerodynamically sound wind turbines. The African Namib Desert Beetle inspired a structure that could be used to build cooling devices and even clean up toxic spills. Some even say this innovation could help us combat droughts! The secret of survival is hidden in plain sight all around us!

It may seem peculiar, but coral reefs are often likened to cities. When we think of a City, we typically consider an “artificial” construct by human beings estranged from nature which is demonstrative of how we have paved over natural ecosystems in the past. But The City is also often used as an allegory to illustrate the complexity of coral reefs.

Coral reefs are intricate ecosystems with biological productivity and prosperity within comparatively poor waters. They harbor as much, if not more, diversity underwater as cities do in the urban context. This makes them attractive to marine organisms that evolve to be uniquely adapted to life in the coral reef, so much so that their evolutionary consequence depends on the reef itself! Tall structures grow from the ocean floor like skyscrapers. Like guilds of craftsmen, different species evolve with an emphasis on varied tasks, fulfilling their role in the sustenance of the reef.

As we shape our cities, our cities shape us too. They are living spaces, evolving with us, and need careful consideration. Development and conservation must walk hand in hand. When the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were first formulated, the focus was to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development. This was the SDG 14 ‘Life below water. Concern over being isolated from the other goals, led to its conceptualization as demonstrated below.

Here, nature was placed as the foundation for society, and both nature and society together set the context for the economy. This led to the three pillars of sustainable development, where nature, economy, and society strike a balance. 

Almost 200 countries came together to agree on a set of ‘inalienable rights. However, on the local scale, in policy and for ‘the people’, the SDGs have remained obscure. They can be a powerful tool for people to perceive their everchanging context and their complex daily interactions with nature, society, and norms, as well as their matrix of uses.

While diversity is crucial, both in nature and people, it tends to make consensus more challenging. This agreement and harmony are further threatened as space declines, physically and metaphorically. This causes limits over peoples’ choices to seem amplified.

An alignment around common principles like the SDGs implies mutually supported, unconflicted choices that people can trust. In fact, at a local level, since interdependencies can be tangibly experienced, there can be more transparency and accountability and hence great success with SDGs for a better quality of life.

In NITI Aayog’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) India Index for 2020-21, Karnataka improved its score from 66 in 2019-20 to 72 in 2020-21 and improved its ranking from fourth place to third. The State has shown progress in nine of 16 goals. With the SDGs in mind, if we were to take cues from coral reefs for our cities, we would step into the future with the fervent resilience and evolutionary tact to match our everchanging world.