The European Environment Agency (EEA) admits that “Europe will not achieve its 2030 (sustainable development) goals without urgent action” (Dec 2019). Included in the seven key areas for action by the EEA are “support innovation and nature-based solutions” and “investing in education and skills”. Clearly, current approaches to achieving environmental sustainability and addressing climate change are not achieving results fast enough. Whilst a good first step, we need bolder approaches. Biomimicry offers a bold approach, one based on 3.8 billion years of research conducted by nature. A key educational challenge is to make the transition to a green economy tangible and meaningful. An approach embraced by business is biomimicry, a set of principles based on nature to address human-design challenges; to ensure that the way we meet the needs of humanity also meets the needs of the natural systems we rely on for survival. Google, Apple, Airbus and others are already tapping the power of nature to tackle some of humanities biggest challenges. NatEnt uses biomimicry to take students on a learning journey to discover the principles which makes nature a model for sustainability. It offers an opportunity to explore how these principles can tackle the sustainability challenges facing Europe. And finally, it empowers students to apply their new competences to create real solutions that work; entrepreneurship for social and economic good. STEM subjects offer the ideal vehicle. Biology teaches us about how nutrients cycle in a woodland and can help us see how technical nutrients can cycle in produce design. Chemistry shows us how nature creates infinite shapes and forms using simple formulas with degrade back into harmless elements. Physics demonstrates how forces can be harnessed to reduce energy use. Technology can use the science of nature to build new products, processes and systems which mirror nature. The overall objective of NatEnt is ‘to develop the key STEM and entrepreneurship competences of young people to play an active role in tackling Europe’s key sustainability challenges.’ This will be reached through four objectives: 1. Develop the competence of students to apply biomimicry to understand and address Europe’s key sustainability challenges. 2. Increase the capacity of students to apply entrepreneurial thinking and work collaboratively to create solutions for the green economy. 3. Provide support for teachers to integrate STEM subjects with entrepreneurship. 4. Improve access to digital learning to enhance both independent and collaborative learning. NatEnt will work with schools in 5 countries targeting teachers from secondary/vocational schools, and working with students 15-18 years. We expect to develop and pilot resources with 15 schools, 30 teachers and approximately 500 students. The final results will be widely disseminated to schools, education providers, education departments and networks nationally and throughout Europe. For students, teachers and schools, the project will result in: • More young people motivated and capable to act to bring about a sustainable future and green economy. • Students collaborating to design solutions to Europe’s key sustainability challenges. • New and innovative teaching resources for schools combining biomimicry, STEM, entrepreneurship and digital learning. • Increased capacity of teachers to provide inspiring learning for the green economy. • Future orientated curricula and learning activities. • Online independent learning modules for teachers and students. • Enhanced understanding and application of biomimicry in teaching and learning. NatEnt will achieve these results through integrating biomimicry into STEM subjects and creating entrepreneurial challenges through which STEM knowledge can be applied to tackle sustainability issues. Learning resources will use the natural world to inspire students about how nature solves problems elegantly and sustainably, and then demonstrate how biomimicry can use the same ‘natural genius’ to address human-challenges. Learning resources will be created as online courses to allow for student flexibility and independent learning, as well as more traditional classroom-based activities. A co-creation platform will be established for students to turn their learning from nature into entrepreneurial ideas to address human-challenges. The platform will bring students and entrepreneurs together around common challenges, encouraging them to work collaboratively to achieve win-win results for all. Over the long-term, NatEnt will contribute new perspectives and methods for young people to contribute to building a sustainable Europe. It offers new approaches to sustainability which are matched to the scale of change required. In turbulent times it provides new visions of hope; models to rethink how we meet our needs which bring us into harmony with nature upon which we depend for our future survival and flourishing.
The NatEnt project was created with the goals of integrating sustainability education, grounded in the UN SDGs, with STEM, design, and entrepreneurship subjects as enablers, both inside and outside school environments. The intention was to establish a web platform with both online and offline content, motivating students to act as agents of change, leading them towards a future that is deeply interconnected with nature as an ever-present and understandable point of reference. To achieve this mind shift, the project aimed to facilitate collaboration among students to create solutions that would address the urgent sustainability challenges faced by Europe. NatEnt aimed to inspire young people to see nature as a source of beauty and resources but moreover as a wellspring of knowledge for a sustainable future. By employing biomimicry, the project intended to guide students in developing tangible solutions to global challenges like climate change, promoting societal and economic well-being in the process. The initiative was designed to make a notable impact in empowering the youth to actively participate in addressing Europe's sustainability challenges.
NatEnt (Natural Entrepreneurs) was an initiative to foster education for sustainable development and innovation based on science education and nature-based solutions. It built the critical role of younger generations as agents of positive change, embodying our commitment to support them in concert with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (SDGs). There is a wealth of good educational materials describing what our environmental crises are, but there is relatively little focused on ways of thinking and innovating which can start to address these crises at scale. NatEnt, therefore, sought to present one approach for innovation and design thinking which offers a positive and hopefully method for addressing these multiple crises – biomimicry (see annex 1 for definition). NatEnt also sought to provide learning with a strong STEM focus; to offer inter-disciplinary project-based learning which utilises student skills across a range of subject areas. It also sought to marry STEM teaching with entrepreneurship, the ability to not only understand and create innovative design solutions to human challenges, but to also start turning ideas into action, and for students to see this as a potential part of their future careers.