Our traditional approach to economics has created a world of great wealth imbalances while degrading social and environmental systems across the earth. The root cause of this failure, according to a MIT economist Dr. Simon Johnson, is that economists have not understood the structure of a sustainable economy1. The good news is that earth has an equally complex system we can reference to learn how to resolve our most important economic, environmental, and social challenges.
This Eco-Nomics blog stems from news and political articles, conversations in coffee shops and pubs, and notes from readers. Each article will put ecological knowledge (the rules of nature) to the test, offering solutions to pressing social, environmental, and economic challenges. Can nature’s wisdom enable humanity to reshape the way we do business, govern, shop, eat, share resources, create, and love? There is a lot riding on the answer.
My Background
My quest to understand the shared structure of ecosystems and economies began during business school in the early 90s. It wasn’t until I completed my graduate work in ecological restoration, followed by two decades of business development and non-profit management, that I felt I had enough perspective to write knowledgably about it. Following the 2009 recession I deepened my research on economics and travelled the globe interviewing businessowners, economists, manufacturers, farmers, and others to support my book Ecosystems as Models for Restoring our Economies, nominated for a Colorado book award. I have written over 150 articles on conservation, sustainable economics, ecology, and restoration, and have been honored to give keynote addresses, workshops, and seminars for a wide range of academic and public audiences around the world. If you desire a deeper read on this subject, you can reserve a copy of the 2nd edition of my book today at Anthem Press, scheduled for release in March 2025.
Ecological Insights into our Economies
Some readers may have pondered how efficient ecosystems are in supporting a great diversity of life on earth, and how important diversity is to the resilience of a pine forest, meadow, or jungle. Ecosystems developed their efficiency and resilience over the eons, while rebuilding themselves following countless environmental shifts and natural disturbances. In the process of recovering from droughts, wildfires, and other disturbances ecosystems also strengthen their resistance* to future disturbances. Similarly, farmers that regularly use hand tools build up calluses, which make their hands more resistant to damage.
At the level of an entire ecosystem, resilience and resistance stem from the diversity of species within, which mirrors the common investment strategy “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!” Both economists and ecologists refer to this coupling of resistance and resilience as stability.
The complexity of an economy is aligned with that of earth’s ecosystems. Just as we study other mammals to better understand our human bodies, and how to heal or protect them from threats such as viruses, we can study ecosystems to find clues for restoring our economies to a sustainable state, maintaining stability and productivity during a wide range of threats. A sustainable economy is one that can support a region’s (or a nation’s) needs into perpetuity, without jeopardizing the needs of others, nor impairing the health of the ecosystems our survival depends upon.
The Power of Mutual Benefit (and the key to unlocking it)
In nature, every plant, bird and insect must meet its own needs first. Survival and reproduction depend on it. Only, in the process of serving one’s own needs the interests of others are also served. That is, natural systems are structured to thrive via mutual benefits, or reciprocity. A classic example is a pea plant that must obtain nitrogen to thrive in a garden. It so happens that earth’s atmosphere is comprised mostly of nitrogen. However, that nitrogen is not in a form that can be absorbed by plant roots. Peas solved this dilemma eons ago, by forming a biological bond with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which convert nitrogen from the air into plant-usable forms in the soil. The basic laws of nature dictate, though, that the bacteria must also benefit.
Bacteria need sugar, which plants produce in abundance when synthesizing carbon dioxide, sunlight, and water during photosynthesis—a critical processes for sustaining life on earth. Over time, pea plants evolved with small nodules right on the surface of their roots, to house nitrogen-fixing bacteria. There, bacteria receive a reliable source of sugar, and the pea plant receives an abundance of usable nitrogen. This sort of mutual benefit is what ecologists refer to as symbiosis. These beneficial relationships emerge naturally when the system is structured in a way that rewards them.
Digging Deeper to Discover Root Causes
Symbiosis, resilience, and resistance provide great lessons for our economies. But to discover the structure around which the system is built, and the most important components to manage, requires we dig deeper. To create lasting change, we must first discover the root causes of the social, environmental, and economic problems we face. The mission of this blog is to explore the structure and laws of ecosystems, and apply this root knowledge to restoring our economies (to a sustainable state).
In classic symbiotic fashion, economic restoration not only benefits us financially and socially, but it has far-reaching implications for the health and resilience of earth’s ecosystems. Future articles in this blog will cover a wide range of industries and sectors, with implications for energy and food security, circularity and recycling, productivity and profitability, job creation, and more. Everything is connected. When we restructure our economies in a way that allows business and industry to profit while generating social and environmental benefits, those benefits are difficult to undermine with future political shifts at global and federal levels—the solutions are sustainable by design. Economic restoration is the process of healing what is broken, policy by policy, consumer by consumer, business by business, and nation by nation.
Edited by Amy Randell
* Resistance refers to a system’s ability to withstand a shock, without significant impacts to productivity or to the systems ability to distribute resources to consumers within. Resilience refers to a system’s ability to recover after a disturbance (e.g., turbulence, a shock, or a volatile event).
Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free, to receive new posts, be eligible for giveaways, and receive the Economic Restoration newsletter. If you know a friend or colleague who would enjoy this, please send them a link.
Wessel, D. 2007. “Why Economists Are Still Grasping to Cure Global Poverty.” Wall Street Journal. 11 Jan, 2007. Accessed on 11 Nov, 2022. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB116845440351672808
