Review of Related Literature

A Biosensitivity Mixed – use Residential and Makerspace Community foresighting:

Davao City as a Business Catalyst Center

ARD - 8
By: Ken Tongco
BS - ARCHITECTURE
1. PRINCIPLES FOR A BIOSENSITIVE SOCIETY

2. Biosensitivity: the practical pathway to

planetary health

3. ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF A BIOSENSITIVE

SOCIETY
1. PRINCIPLES FOR A
BIOSENSITIVE SOCIETY
By: Frank Fenner Foundation

”A Biosensitivity Mixed – use Residential and Makerspace Community

foresighting: Davao City as a Business Catalyst Center”

• According to Frank Fenner Foundation, promotes the transition

of human society to one that is ‘biosensitive’ - prosperous,
cohesive, and respectful of nature and other living beings. This
will mean human activities are ecologically, economically and
socially sustainable, based on a deep understanding and
acceptance of the human place in nature and within safe
planetary boundaries.
• The term biosensitive to describe a society that goes beyond
mere ecological sustainability. And society must be ecologically
sustainable – otherwise in the long term it cannot continue to
exist. But ecological sustainability is the bottom line. And to be
sustainable, we must aim for a society that positively promotes
health and wellbeing across and for all sections of the human
population as well as for the ecosystems of the planet.
Biosensitivity is a broader and richer concept than sustainability,
and provides us with the road map for attaining ecological,
economic and social sustainability.
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1. PRINCIPLES FOR A
BIOSENSITIVE SOCIETY
By: Frank Fenner Foundation

”A Biosensitivity Mixed – use Residential and Makerspace Community

foresighting: Davao City as a Business Catalyst Center”

• Biosensitivity provides the way forward. It is based on the

scientific consensus that the resilience of civilisation and
human well-being, including health, is dependent on a
“healthy” planet. The biosphere should comprise flourishing
ecological systems, a rich variety of plants and animals, fertile
soils, pure waters and clean air. Society should be more equal.
All this requires a fundamental change in attitude towards the
biosphere and the unequal distribution of power and wealth
within human society.

• Turning biosensitivity into action requires principles to help guide

decision-making in all sectors – households, businesses and
governments – towards practices that protect and enhance
natural life processes, at scales from local to global, in human
settlements and across landscapes.
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BIOSENSITIVITY PRINCIPLES - Humanity through its systems of
governance will:

• Promote a just society,

• Put protection of foster human wellbeing • Minimise use of • Structure the built
• Maintain human
the ecosystem and health, enable materials, energy and environment and population in balance
before economic, achievement of each resources and, where manage
person’s full potential and
with the limitations
necessary, dispose of
financial, legal, manage human conflict waste within ecosystem landscapes to imposed by
political and peacefully so as to not adhere to these environmental and
replenishment and
affect the ecosystem and societal capacity
cultural interests recovery rates. principles, and
biosphere adversely

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BIO-SENSITIVITY FRAMEWORK
Together the principles and practices make the biosensitivity
frameworkTogether the principles and practices make the biosensitivity
framework

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2. Biosensitivity: the practical
pathway to planetary health
by:Peter Tait
”A Biosensitivity Mixed – use Residential and Makerspace Community
foresighting: Davao City as a Business Catalyst Center”

• According to Peter Tait, Human civilisation is at a crossroads. We are

aware that we need to change how we are affecting the ecosystems on
which we depend. However, we have paid too little attention to the
processes of change itself and this is part of the reason we have failed
to take necessary action.

• Peter Tait have two emerging ideas, which biosensitivity and

planetary health, offer new ways for the public health movement to
approach action, While planetary health is a goal, introducing
biosensitive practice is the means to reach that goal and its describes
biosensitive practice and how it can help us move forward.

• Biosensitivity underpins a new way of thinking about the place of

humans in nature that recognises the primacy of nature and recognises
humans as a part of nature.

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2. Biosensitivity: the practical
pathway to planetary health
by:Peter Tait
”A Biosensitivity Mixed – use Residential and Makerspace Community
foresighting: Davao City as a Business Catalyst Center”

• Planetary health is a new approach to public health that

incorporates the notion that healthy people need a healthy
society and, importantly, well-functioning ecosystem
processes.

• It is an emerging field that builds on the past half-century of

socio-ecological approaches to health evident in the
related fields of EcoHealth, One Health, ecological public
health, human ecology and political ecology.

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2. Biosensitivity: the practical
pathway to planetary health
by:Peter Tait
”A Biosensitivity Mixed – use Residential and Makerspace Community
foresighting: Davao City as a Business Catalyst Center”

• According to Boyden’s concept, biosensitivity is a parallel evolution

from the socio-ecological approach via human ecology. He argues
that understanding the importance of ‘life’ and the place of humans
in the broad web of living things is the key factor for addressing
human damage to the environment.

• According to O’Brien, identifies that transformation includes a

“combination of technological innovations, institutional reforms,
behavioural shifts and cultural changes; they often involve the
questioning of values, the challenging of assumptions, and the
capacity to closely examine fixed beliefs, identities and stereotypes.

• The most important of these is actually behaviour. Technology use

can be considered a type of behaviour. When people change their
behaviour, their ideas will shift to align with the new behaviour.

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 2. Biosensitivity: the practical
pathway to planetary health
by:Peter Tait
”A Biosensitivity Mixed – use Residential and Makerspace Community
foresighting: Davao City as a Business Catalyst Center”

• Planetary health gives us a goal to aspire to but doesn’t

immediately suggest a way to transform culture.

• According to O’Brien, he observes that our failure as a species

to take effective action on global environmental change is due
to lack of understanding of how social change occurs, which
includes the lack of an effective theory of change, and paying
insufficient attention to the actual processes of making change
over time.

• Biosensitivity provides a powerful tool when its core definition is

applied as a theory of change, such that introducing biosensitive
practices becomes the methodology for effective action for
individual and societal level behaviour change, which brings
about the cultural transformation required for an ecologically and
socially sustainable human society. 10
3. ESSENTIAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF A
BIOSENSITIVE SOCIETY
”A Biosensitivity Mixed – use Residential and Makerspace Community
foresighting: Davao City as a Business Catalyst Center”

• Unlike the situation today, biosensitivity will be right at the top

of the political and social agenda -
reflecting the reality that we humans are living organisms, pr
oducts of biological evolution and entirely dependent on the p
rocesses of life for our wellbeing and continued existence.

• We must aim for a society that is not only sustainable, but tha
t also really promotes human and ecosystem health.

• SUMMARY OF PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

• The following list of some of the
most important physical features of a biosensitive societ
y serves to remind us
that the long term survival of civilisation will require radic
al changes in many different areas of human activity.
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3. ESSENTIAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF A
BIOSENSITIVE SOCIETY
”A Biosensitivity Mixed – use Residential and Makerspace Community
foresighting: Davao City as a Business Catalyst Center”

• The most significant change of all will be in economic

arrangements. In a biosensitive society the economic system will:
• Be based on economic theory that reflects a sound
understanding of the processes of life that
underline our existence and of the biological limits
to human activities on Earth.
• Ensure the satisfaction of human needs in ways
that do not result in a continuously increasing rate
of use of material resources and energy.
• Progressively reduce present disparities in material
wealth, health and well being across human
population.

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