Competitive Coexistence

Abstract:

If two plants are growing in the same environment, there usually aren’t enough resources around to make everyone happy. This competition for resources like water and nutrients, however, can drive innovation, adaptation, and evolution in plants.

After walking around and looking at each country’s pavilion, beautiful displayed with photos of stunning landscapes from the country, and statistics on how they are working to solve climate change, I wondered:  How can friendly competition be used to drive action and adaptation?

Challenge:

Can you organize a competition with your friend and family (or against yourself) to make being sustainable more fun? It can even be something small like, who can use the least paper towels this week? This competition might even spark some innovation…

Full story:

There were two different events at COP27 that I focused on today: the opening ceremony with the world leaders gathering to talk and walking around and looking at pavilions in the blue zone at COP27, where the observers and politicians have access to walk around. Each country has a pavilion, outlining its plan for climate action, along with some other organizations, like NGOs.

As I walked through the blue zone, looking from pavilion to pavilion, I almost felt like I was at a sports team convention. There was a competitive and joyful spirit at each booth. At the Brazilian pavilion, it had numbers flashing all over the screen as to what solar and wind energy advances it was making in the country. There was even a virtual reality adventure you could go on to venture into the Amazon Rainforest.

I wondered, if each country acted like a sports team, could this competitiveness to outdo the others in climate change mitigation and adaptation be a driver of change?

After a fire roars through an area, not just any plant can pop up with renewed vigor. The plants that come back after fires must compete with all the other plants also trying to remerge and spread their seeds after the fire.

But in ecology, there is this term called competitive coexistence. I can use an example to illustrate this term. Because there isn’t unlimited amounts of water in the desert, the plants must compete to see who can use the water. But, the desert isn’t dominated by one species of plan – there is prickly pear, lupines, grasses, and many other plants. These plants have adapted to live alongside each other even though they fight over the same resources. Cacti have adapted a way to story water, and other plants have evolved to not need much water.

What I’m wondering, is can all countries competitively coexist as we work toward climate action? Can each country learn to adapt its particular skillset and resources to push itself to take action to mitigate and adapt to the changing climate? Can that action be encouraged by friendly competition from other countries?