Designing sustainable systems using nature’s toolbox

Supporting the Earth’s human population without destabilizing planetary processes is the central challenge of sustainability science. Key to achieving this goal is designing systems that are robust and resilient to dynamic and unpredictable conditions. Bioinspiration leverages naturally evolved solutions to address such challenges, yet a solution derived from one-to-one correspondence between a natural and artificial challenge can be limited in its broader application. Here we advocate for an approach to nature-inspired design that forgoes mimicking specific solutions in favor of identifying general design features that enable natural systems to function. These features are not specific to any naturally evolved solution and so have the potential to be broadly applied across human-engineered systems to enhance resiliency in ways that do not compromise ecosystem functioning, thereby contributing to sustainable development. As an illustrative example, we show how a well-known bioinspired algorithm that mimics the collective action of ant colonies can be understood in terms of fundamental design features and how these features can in turn be better harnessed to benefit diverse sustainable design initiatives.