Nature’s guide to building resilient systems

What leaves, bees and the air can teach humans about challenges. "Life on Earth has long faced these kinds of unpredictable challenges. Asteroid impacts, dramatic climate swings and new pathogens have caused mass extinctions many times in the planet’s history. But over billions of years, nature has evolved strategies for building immunity to such shocks. Human ingenuity has already based many new technologies on nature’s example, from Velcro, which imitates the spiky burrs of plants, to cooling towers modeled on termite mounds. In the 21st century, our institutions can draw similar inspiration from the systems that enable nature to survive unforeseeable catastrophes." Ruth DeFries contemplates.