Biomimicry is the process of emulating nature's technologies in order to help the human species thrive here on earth while impacting nature less. Practitioners of biomimicry realize that our biological elders have already developed the technology to:

• Keep the earth's climate tuned for the needs of all life-form
• Harvest, store, and distribute energy locally, cheaply, and in a variety of ways
• Separate salt from water with sun power
• Sequester carbon while increasing the fertility of soils and water
• Spin CO2 into durable plastics that biodegrade
• Travel without harmful emissions or congestion
• Produce fiber, food, and fuel without erosion or pesticides
• Manufacture without fossil-fuel driven heat, pressures, and toxins
• Stay germ-free without developing antibiotic resistance
• Bounce back from floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, wind, disease, and fire
• Keep an incredibly complex economy productive for all
• Respond to all basic needs with what is at hand
• Create partnerships with other species in order to make the most of what habitats have to offer
• Focus on highly specialized niche markets, while becoming part of a broader web of life
• Innovate as changes in the environment require while always reducing their footprint to zero

What if revolutionary solutions to the world's most vexing challenges had already been solved, but were hidden in obscure journals, known only to a few scientists? What if we could free this information, publicize it widely, and unleash it to the entrepreneurial minds of a new generation of creative designers? What if these ideas, already planet-approved and tested, could inspire entirely new solutions in the fields of manufacturing, health, energy, chemistry, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and building? What if they could inspire a more efficient economic system capable of responding to the needs of all?

That's the world-changing idea behind the Nature's 100 Best© book. This book will be produced annually, along with learning and design tools developed over the years to come. The ideas for the book are based on a proprietary database created from peer-reviewed scientific articles published in international journals.

The partners in this endeavor - ZERI, Biomimicry Guild and the Biomimmicry Institute, in cooperation with IUCN, and UNEP - believe that to solve the world's most intractable problems, we need to look where we haven't looked before: in the extremely successful R&D lab that's been operating on this planet for 3.8 billion years. In that time, 10-30 million species have learned to do everything we want to do, without guzzling fossil fuels, polluting the planet, or mortgaging our common future. They've learned what works, what is appropriate, and what lasts here on earth. The "fittest" strategy is that which is the easiest to accomplish, produced with what is right at hand, and without creating waste. There is no landfill in nature, only a ready market for everything that is produced.