> This section was co-authored with Jamie Brown-Hansen.
The field of biomimicry is, among other things, a way of doing biology that looks for unifying patterns in the design of natural systems. There is enormous diversity in the natural world, yet biologists are able to identify certain design strategies that are common across multiple species and even kingdoms of species. Some of the deepest design patterns, in fact, can be recognised in almost all biological systems at every scale, from bacteria to multicellular organisms to entire ecosystems.
These unifying patterns are referred to within the biomimicry community as Life’s Principles. They represent a design framework that has delivered thriving, regenerative systems in the natural world for 3.8 billion years, a proven recipe for long-term success within the operating conditions of this planet that we can apply where relevant in the effort to achieve sustainable human systems, including our systems of exchange.
The proposal of the credit commons is consistent with many of nature’s core unifying design patterns: it is bottom-up, locally attuned and adapted, diverse, decentralised, iterative, modular, and premised on quantitative stability over time. The interconnection of community-based mutual credit systems is also endorsed by the Bio-credits Working Group of the Biomimicry Global Network in answer to the question, “How would nature design a financial system?” The remainder of this section draws out some specific characteristics of the credit commons proposal that are consistent with natural system design.