DNA SAFE

My work deals with the question of protecting earth’s biodiversity and preserving it for future generations. It was particularly important to me that the design is participatory. Whether young or old, everyone should be able to contribute. That’s why I kept my toolset as simple as possible. The production is easy and cheap. At the same time, something that was originally meant to take life is transformed into something that is able to protect and preserve life. The whole concept is conceived as an open source library. A field of application that I found very appealing are kindergardens and elementary schools, which caught my attention while working on the project. I myself often spent time in the woods during my early childhood. 
To connect this directly to the possibility that children, for example, could collect insects for the library, seems to me to be not only sensible in a way of preserving the insects but also in a way of sensitizing the children early on to something that has meanwhile become very urgent: the extinction of species. This is also a good opportunity to encourage a sense of responsibility at an early stage, as it is primarily us humans who bear for our environment.

DNA Safe

by Milan Behrens

Nobody knows exactly how many animal, plant and insect species exist on this earth. But even if man encounters a new species from time to time, he himself is responsible for the extinction of many others of them. 

Hi, my name is Nathan.
I want to tell you a little story. It’s about me. About me and my life in 2020. We have now managed to exploit our home planet to such an extent that, if we continue like this, 40% of all animal and plant species could be threatened with extinction by 2030. 
You can already see how natural resources are becoming more and more expensive. And not only oil and products made from it. No, even wood, for example, can hardly be paid for anymore, or if we go towards food I can hardly afford to eat fish at least once a month, because the oceans have been so overfished that there is hardly any left. And the one that still exists can’t be paid by a normal mortal anymore. Of course not everything is bad. 
The people notice of course what happens and have reacted accordingly. Meanwhile 12% of the earth are covered with nature reserves and one recognizes the value of nature. Unfortunately, however, also this not so as one should. Everything is only measured in money. One already tries to compare the services of nature, e.g. the water supply, with a certain monetary value. As if one could balance one’s own living space with money. 
Such nonsense. 

Well, yes. But there is actually something beautiful to tell. As incapable as we were to protect animals and plants from the outset, so much we are now trying to preserve them. They knew how to use the technical progress and developed drones which were distributed all over the world to collect DNA from animals as well as samples of all possible raw materials and plants occurring in nature. This should serve to reproduce in the future extinct animal and plant species or also certain no more available raw materials, as soon as the know-how is available. Well and the ingenious one is there. Not only the drones collect these samples. They have managed to get people to work for humanity, even without wanting to be paid for it. A very clever young woman has come up with a trick that anyone interested in can use to help feed these huge raw material, plant and animal databases with information. And that even without burdening the environment even more. 
She bought up old ammunition cases from shooting ranges, had them cleaned and developed a suitable closure with which one can close the case and then freeze it and secure the samples for future generations.