Can sustainability be inspired by design from nature?

Economically and politically mankind's natural environment has become one ofthe most important issues within modern society. With the realisation thatthousands of years of polluting the earth and stripping its resources withoutrestraint is having a massive effect on ecosystems and surroundingenvironments. For example, there is real concern that one of the wide rangingeffects of this greed and exploitation is the issue of global warming. "Arctic ice israpidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completely ice-freesummer by 2040 or earlier. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are alreadysuffering from the sea-ice loss/' (nationalgeographic.2010)A more sustainable way to live alongside natural habitats and the integration ofnature to mankind's modern thinking and needs is key to a more sustainableand manageable approach to the relationship with not only local environmentbut also the environment on a global scale. "Just as our banking sector isstruggling with its debts - and paradoxically also facing calls for a return to socalled'old-fashioned,' traditional banking - so Nature's life-support systems arefailing to cope with the debts we have built up there too. So, if we don't face upto this, then Nature, the biggest bank of all, could go bust"- HRH The Prince ofWales, The Richard Dimbleby Lecture 'Facing the Future' 8 July 2009. (Verkaik,R. 2009