Symbiotic Engineering: A Novel Approach for Environmental Remediation

Abstract

Classical engineering design aims to solve the problem at hand, perhaps not considering potential deleterious consequences to the broader environmental system. Sustainable engineering design has incorporated the environment into the designed solution, but it passively attempts to “not harm” the environment. The recently coined techno-ecological synergy (TES) concept attempts to balance ecological demands (i.e., conventional impacts) with ecological services, either by minimizing ecological impacts or by developing new ecosystems. Beyond these apparently passive approaches, environmentally aligned engineered solutions that engage the environmental inner workings into the solution paradigm are necessitated. Here, we introduce this paradigm-shifting concept, i.e., symbiotic engineering, which can actively engage existing environmental synergies (e.g., interdependence between species) into the engineering solution domain. The perspective discusses natural symbiosis, outlines the principles of symbiotic engineering, and applies this novel construct to propose example solutions to enduring environmental challenges. Hence, this perspective will serve as a milestone in the pursuit of symbiotic engineering to design solutions for large-scale environmental engineering challenges.