Seeking Synergies Between Technological and Ecological Systems: Challenges and Framework

Abstract

To benefit from the goods and services provided by nature, it is necessary to establish mutually beneficial or synergistic networks of technological and ecological systems. Such synergies can result in human decisions that protect and restore nature by innovative approaches that may not be discovered by conventional techno-centric approaches. This requires new conceptual frameworks and methods for evaluating and designing techno-ecological synergies, which include accounting for the role of ecosystems and considering the intermittent or homeorhetic nature of ecosystems in addressing the desired steady or homeostatic behavior of human-designed systems. The framework of techno-ecological synergy (TES) explicitly accounts for the role of ecosystems in supporting human activities. It complements efforts such as industrial symbiosis and circular economy to benefit from synergies with nature and encourage nature-positive decisions. The framework of TES has been used to include ecosystem services in life cycle assessment and to define absolute environmental sustainability metrics. It also enables the design of integrated networks of human and natural systems and can often result in a larger design space than conventional techno-centric designs.