One of the most important insights of the systemic understanding of life is the recognition that networks are the basic pattern of organization of all living systems. Ecosystems are understood in terms of food webs, that is, networks of organisms. Organisms are networks of cells, and cells are networks of molecules. So the network is a pattern that is common to all life. Wherever we see life, we see networks.

Closer examination of these living networks has shown that their key characteristic is that they are self-generating. In a cell, for example, all the biological structures are generated by a network of chemical reactions. You have a cell membrane, the food comes in, the simple molecules come in from the outside, but all the proteins, the enzymes, the DNA, all of that is continually built and rebuilt by this cellular network of chemical processes. So living networks continually create or recreate themselves by transforming or replacing their components.

We can also observe networks in the social realm. “Networking” has become the key metaphor of our time. In the social realm, these networks are not networks of chemical processes, but networks of communications. So the processes are processes of communication. Living networks in human communities are networks of communications. And like biological networks they are self-generating, but what they generate is mostly non-material. Each conversation or communication gives rise to thoughts, information, and ideas, which then trigger further communications, and in this way the whole network generates itself.

A sustainable community is usually defined as one that is able to satisfy its needs without diminishing the chances of future generations. That’s the traditional definition that was introduced by Lester Brown in the early 1980’s. It is an important moral exhortation. It reminds us of our responsibility to pass on to our children and grandchildren a world with as many opportunities as the ones we inherited. However, this definition does not tell us anything about how to build a sustainable community. What we need, therefore, in my view, is an operational definition of sustainability. And such an operational definition starts from the recognition that we do not need to invent sustainable communities from scratch but we can model them after the sustainable communities of nature.

Ecosystems are communities of plants, animals and microorganisms that have evolved over billions of years so as to maximize their long term survival and sustainability. So a sustainable human community must be designed in such a manner that its ways of life, businesses, economy, physical structures and social institutions do not interfere with nature’s inherent ability to sustain life. This is, in my view, the key. And we need to realize that this does not mean maintaining the status quo. Nature’s ability to sustain life is not a static state but is a dynamic process, a continuing process of change, evolution, adaptation, creativity. This definition implies that the first step in our endeavor to build sustainable communities must be to become ecologically literate. This is to understand the principles of organization that ecosystems have evolved to sustain the web of life.

In the coming decades, the survival of humanity will depend on our ecological literacy, our ability to understand the basic principles of ecology and live accordingly. This means that ecoliteracy must become a critical skill for politicians, business leaders and professionals in all spheres and should be the most important part of education at all levels, from primary and secondary schools to colleges, universities and the continuing education and training of professionals.

In our programs at the Center for Ecoliteracy, children from kindergarten to high school learn the fundamental facts of life. For example, that one species’s waste is another species’s food. That matter cycles continually through the web of life. That the energy driving these ecological cycles flows from the sun, that diversity assures resilience, and that life from its beginning more than three billion years ago did not take over the planet by combat but by networking. So ecoliteracy is the first step on the road to sustainability.

Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, which promotes ecology and systems thinking in primary and secondary education. A physicist and systems theorist, he is the author of The Tao of Physics, The Web of Life and other books. Excerpted from Bioneers Radio Series IV, “The Art of Relationships: From Ecology to Healing.” For further resources, including Bioneers conference recordings and Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World, visit the Bioneers Store.