3.1 Rules of ecotechnology.
| Rule no. | Rule | Brief explanation |
|---|---|---|
| 1) | Minimize energy waste. | Limit fossil energy utilization, thus reducing global warming; find new energy sources with promising efficiency. |
| 2) | Recycle. | Recycle and reuse materials, synthetic or natural; reduce environmental degradation. |
| 3) | Retain all kinds of structures. | Natural structures and biodiversity persevere. |
| 4) | Consider long‐term horizons. | Sustainable life will be realized with long‐time evaluations. |
| 5) | Do not forget that humankind is dependent on many organisms and that their loss may lessen our ability to survive in the changing environment. | Continuously replace food sources and medications. |
| 6) | Consider economic dynamics. | Incorporate dynamic ecosystem models in conventional practices. |
| 7) | Nature is a teaching ground for handling complex systems. In particular, the ability to survive by adapting to changing conditions can be learned only from Nature. | The preparation of new technological models should be adopted from principles of Nature and based on adapting to continuous change in the environment. |
| 8) | People, as part of the ecosystem, are directly dependent on solar energy and indirectly dependent on energy stored in coal and oil as well as vegetable and animal food. | The need for energy for growth and reproduction is inevitable: we are dependent on the environment. |
| 9) | People are sensitive to external inputs, particularly solar radiation and the supply of minerals from the earth. | Environmental impacts can be both beneficial and detrimental. Extraction and use of minerals from the earth's crust is for human welfare, while exposure to harmful UV radiation is the root cause of diseases such as cancer. |
| 10) | Manage the environment as an interconnected system, not as isolated subsystems. | Every great discovery made by humans has come with a price to be paid by the environment sooner or later. A systematic and detailed investigation must be carried out with products having multi‐mediated feedbacks so that negative environmental impacts can be minimized. |
| 11) | Evaluate the available management options simultaneously. | The various routes for solving environmental issues must be thoroughly investigated and assessed. |
| 12) | Include secondary effects elsewhere. | A global system of evaluation is necessary to evaluate the output measures of environmental management practices. |
| 13) | Do not exceed the ecosystem's homeostatic (assimilation) capacity. | The environment should not be deteriorated to a level from which it cannot recover or be restored to its original state. |
| 14 | Consider ecosystem self‐adaptation to management strategies. | Resistance to chemical treatment by organisms (flies, parasites, super‐bugs) is a well‐known problem. Introducing new species (plants or animals) to a region can be helpful. However, the new species' ability to adapt to the environment must be considered. |
| 15 | Evaluate the socioeconomic environment. | Economic welfare bodies and environmentalists should work together to achieve common goals. |
| 16 | Evaluate all possible human uses of the environment. | While designing a model or project, one must consider the maximum utilization of environmental resources with as little impact as possible. |
| 17 | Base measures on ecosystem principles. | Ecosystem principles play a vital role in the successful launch of environmental management models. |
These concepts have been discussed in detail by Mitsch and Jørgensen [34]. Further, four philosophical Aristotelian causes have been suggested by Ulanowicz [58, 59] to argue the change‐causing activities of engineering, as follows:
Formal cause – the essence or nature of a thing
Material cause – the matter
Efficient cause –the source of change
Final cause – the goal or purpose
In general, the efficient causes of traditionally practiced engineering models are based on Newtonian‐mechanical approaches in the form of machine, design, and method. Societal as well as natural demands influence these approaches by material and formal causes. Material causes arise due to dependence on natural resources in terms of the extraction of raw materials and energy, while formal causes are based on the actual extraction of those materials from nature to meet societal demands. In this way, anthropocentric engineering design reflects societal norms: safety, welfare, and quality of life. Although the final cause may be a replication of societal overlap with nature, it primarily focuses on protecting the environment with nature‐preserving services and designs. Incorporating both organized simplicity and disorganized complexity in the four Aristotelian causes make traditional engineering designs advantageous. On the other hand, the Newtonian worldview covers the controlled development of elements, design of systems, and maintaining controlled conditions to serve and preserve societal needs. The ecological engineering worldview, design, system, and modeling have been successfully addressed by the Aristotelian four causes' scheme. However, the Newtonian approach has failed to reveal the nature of nature, indicating that it is an insufficient tool for designing the ecosystem [19].
Nature represents a self‐organizing, self‐sustaining system up to an exploitation threshold. Thus, any new approach must formulate a scheme to minimize external influence and also fulfill societal demands. Newtonian knowledge was found to be insufficient, and engineering science proved to be sufficiently efficient in developing the field of ecological engineering in terms of design concepts and management of the ecosystem. Gattie and Foutz [18] recognized the amalgamation of systems with engineering ecology as “the development, synthesis, and insight‐building of theory and principles from the fields of general systems science, systems ecology, and engineering, as they apply to making complex, holistic ecosystems, tractable study units of nature.” The foundation of traditional engineering has been built on the principles of engineering sciences; therefore, these principles must also be rigorously followed in the discipline of ecological engineering.
Before applying engineering concepts and theory to the ecosystem, the distinctive perceptions of ecosystem ecology and system ecology should be considered. The former is a discipline of measuring, quantifying, and tracing the flow of energy and materials via biotic as well as abiotic media of an ecosystem, while the latter defines the science
