Engineering and environmental sustainability don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Dr Carla Washbourne and Dr Jenny McArthur, look at how a more holistic engineering mindset will be key to addressing our 21st century challenges
The infrastructure sector is tasked with responding to huge societal and environmental challenges. It is a crucial piece of the puzzle in our efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goals and in, ultimately, enabling a world that can thrive socially, economically and environmentally. But in order to do this, engineers in the sector must confront some innate contradictions between sustainable development and traditional approaches to infrastructure development; contradictions that have contributed to our current crisis.
At first glance, engineering and environmental sustainability exist on very different planes
Engineering as a discipline exists in the service of people. Historically, engineers have used our technical skills in shaping the world to the benefit of human lives. However, we are increasingly realising that the world is not so easily controlled and that many of our accepted engineering approaches have negative impacts on the environment and, unintentionally, on the people that they are intended to serve. This raises an existential question: are engineering and environmental sustainability inevitably in conflict, or can we develop a more holistic approach to engineering for complex 21st century challenges?
Modern engineering is still dominated by significant use of water, energy and material resources. Internationally, large construction projects make extensive use of concrete, steel and glass, without significant discretion to the environmental context of building form or materials.
Engineering retains an inclination to create artificial environments through material, architectural and technological innovation, simulating our needs for heating, cooling and lighting in functionally sealed spaces. Engineering also exists comfortably within the world of contemporary resource economics, where labour, materials and products are carefully quantified and exchanged. Environmental sustainability depends on impact reduction and a mindfulness and sensitivity towards our interactions with the wider environment.
Assigning a monetary value to the environmental impact of development projects has become more common since the end of the 20th century. However, practical and philosophical debates continue, the most central being: can, or should, we use economic thinking to judge the often poorly quantified, or effectively unquantifiable, experiences and benefits that we get from our environment?
To this day many approaches to common challenges of water supply and waste processing still rely on controlling and bypassing rather than working in sympathy with the broader environment
This isn’t a completely new concern. Environmental engineering is one area in which the relationship between engineer and environmentalist has been historically explored and tested, practically from the earliest days of civilisation. As a modern profession, environmental engineering emerged in the development of the large-scale infrastructures of the 19th century industrial revolution. However, to this day many approaches to common challenges of water supply and waste processing still rely on controlling and bypassing rather than working in sympathy with the broader environment.
Large-scale contemporary water infrastructure projects such as the Thames Tideway Tunnel are largely reflective of this approach. This project has been both praised for its scale and ambition, and criticised for its comparative lack of vision in authentically integrating more environmentally sensitive approaches[1]. Engineering has reached a critical nexus: well positioned to contribute to solutions to global challenges, but only in light of a deep reflection on long engrained assumptions and practices.
There is increasing evidence that engineering disciplines are starting to making great advances in adopting more low-impact approaches. Mindsets have begun to change across the industry, with increasing global awareness of the impacts of engineering projects as they increase in pace and scale with urbanisation and development. The scope of these impacts has become impossible to ignore, in the face of the combined challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and water scarcity.
World-leading engineering firms dedicate significant capacity to environmental impact assessment, taking a broad-based view of the impact of developments over space and time. Technical innovations abound in design, procurement, construction and demolition, aided and accompanied by regulations which increasingly frame construction projects from a whole life cycle perspective and provide incentives and support for environmental innovation and compliance through project planning and assessment tools such as BREAAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method)[2]. Sustainability increasingly informs the standards that specify designs, materials and approaches.
Alongside technical improvements in engineering practice, it is becoming increasingly necessary to engage directly with urban planners, regulators and infrastructure decision-makers to give us the opportunity to proactively guide more environmentally-sound engineering solutions. Often the barriers result from public policy: sustainable technologies or alternatives exist, but cannot be implemented or scaled up due to poorly-aligned regulation, institutional structures, or funding or financing arrangements.
One key opportunity here is in the broad-based and non-disciplinary training of the next generation of engineers, planners and decision-makers. In many engineering degrees the broader environmental and social context is not a central part of the curriculum. Simultaneously, few courses for future policy makers enable a deep focus on engineering policy and infrastructure decision-making. We are both engineers by training (engineering geology and civil engineering), now working with a range of different communities in addressing contemporary engineering policy challenges. In our teaching on sustainable infrastructure and public policy we increasingly recognise ourselves as part of a global community of educational innovators bringing engineering and sustainable development to the same table.
Embedding environmental and sustainability concerns into the education of those shaping the next generation of infrastructure, will allow future professionals to fully embrace the holistic, large-scale and long-term approaches needed to address our 21st century challenges.
Dr Carla Washbourne and Dr Jenny McArthur are lecturers at the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy at University of College London.
References
[1] Integrating what and for whom? Financialisation and the Thames Tideway Tunnel https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098017736713
[2] BREEAM https://www.breeam.com
A fascinating article which throws up some interesting questions, largely ethical ones. The authors sometimes seem to be mixing engineering with commerce.
Two of the questions raised have easy answers:
1. Is engineering in conflict with the environment? It is certainly not: good engineering has provided clean air and water plus low cost power for several generations. Commerce is commonly in conflict with the environment as the cost of avoiding possible environmental impacts is often massively out of proportion to the risks. It is cost / benefit assessments that decides which projects go ahead. Unfortunately, Engineers seem not to be very good at these when ethical issues are thrown into the mix: they need to learn from the disciplines used by NICE in evaluating difficult health alternatives.
2. Should economic assessments inform decisions about unclear environmental issues? Again, this is essential as resources are limited and money wasted on “vanity” projects is usually money taken form the poorest in society to benefit the wealthiest group. Engineers need to do proper, broad-based risk assessments for projects, and in my experience normally do these well. Environmentalists commonly using pressure groups to get political leverage, that is something that ethical engineers ought to be challenging as it delays societal improvement.
With Jack I agree; it is a fascinating article.
I believe that the issues can, and should, be viewed from different standpoint.
And the inclusion of “commerce” is important; possibly this is related to the growth of urban focused policies and the decline in local economies.
Local economies used to be closed systems and so the detrimental effects of any technology would be recognised by the (local) owner/management This meant that railways, for example, were forced to be relevant to the locals (both for freight and transport) – rather than some remote cities (urbs).
This differentiation of society has grown and results in technologies such as electric vehicles relevant to a urban elites rather than rural folk or massive, and jealousy provoking spends on Crossrail and HS – rather than promoting industry and infrastructure for rural and small town.
Lobbyists often promote their own limited ideas (“solutions”) without thought to the users and those who bear the cost – sometimes using environmental issues and concerns as a smoke screen – or say (invoking a “technology will develop” – such as energy storage) a solution will arise for the gaps in their ideas.
I do believe that a holistic view of the costs is important but should also be enlarged by attempting to address the possible benefits to those bearing the costs and not being allowed to benefit (and, before you ask, I cannot see how this might be done for HS2 – especially with the lack of visibility of the putative “capacity” benefits).
Thus such a holistic approach would help to spread the benefits to those using a system and to those bearing the costs of the system; this was recognised, in the past, by the introduction of “Parliamentary Trains”, for example.
I would add that I suspect that some lobby groups (perhaps including some environmentalists) view the countryside as a “rural idyll” full of holiday homes and cycle-ways without consideration of the distortions and strains that imposes on the local economy.
Thus examples of how lobbyists and politicians behave (and the consequences thereof) should assist engineers in understanding and appreciating the true issues (rather than the mean spirited commercial and political ones) – though I do wonder if any such report would be hidden away by the lobbyists – possible as “commercially confidential”
The first two comments point a finger at the role of ‘commerce’ in decision-making. I’d argue that a cost/benefit analysis which fails to factor in the environmental costs – of HS2 or gas-fired (without CCS) generation – does so as a consequence of the failure of economic governance/regulation.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-09-25/the-ecological-crisis-is-a-political-crisis/
Why on Earth would anyone want to exclude “ethical issues” from a CBA? Life and death rulings by NICE are often imposed by the immoral greed (IPR) of Big Pharma. Scrap patents on medicines, or kowtow to the “mean spirited commercial and political” demands of Donald Trump.
“Dominic Cummings got his British Darpa. Can he make it work?”
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/dominic-cummings-british-darpa
“Details of how the £800m will be spent will be unveiled in the spending review later this year.”
“British Arpa would fund proposals in fields with a high risk of failure but great potential.” Would it not be better to first fund proposals with great potential and no risk of failure?! Then the income derived from licensing is ploughed back into more R&I. That’s how Germany’s done it since 1949. “The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is a research organisation that conducts applied research for private and public enterprises as well as for the general benefit of the public.” Budget, €2.6 billion/year. “The German public, through federal government, ‘owns’ the Fraunhofer Society,“ and can waive royalties on any IPR that can be “for the general benefit of the public.”
“Can we develop a more holistic approach to engineering for complex 21st century challenges?”
YES, but direct that question to politicians, because vertical integration is the only logical strategy for the green energy transition. There’s no conflict between environment and engineering, per se. The problem is the ‘long engrained assumptions and practices’ permitted by laissez-faire dogma. “An industry-led advisory body provides the EU commission with forecasts on Europe’s future energy needs.” As a direct consequence, the best and only sustainable options will be stymied, in favour of business as usual, especially in regard to investment in infrastructure.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/eu-accused-of-climate-crisis-hypocrisy-after-backing-32-gas-projects
Regulation should control an economical life-cycle for every industrial material we use. All that’s required is the political will to do the right (left-wing!) thing, for the benefit of future generations. The circular economy will never evolve through ‘free market’ forces. Capitalism cannot deliver green infrastructure to work in ALL our interests. Enlightened policies must have a deep-rooted social purpose. ‘Privatising the profit and socialising the loss’ puts science and civilisation at risk.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mariana-mazzucato
Excellent and thought provoking. I suspect that the real historic issue is not with engineering per se, rather those who drive projects all the while trying to minimise or ignore anyone who is not fully behind their pet idea. This is often and in my experience usually, allied to financial pressures to minimise what is unnecessary. Invariably on a short term basis as implied above, ‘a solution will be engineered some time in the future’. Idea and project drivers surround themselves with ‘yes-men’ who either do not know enough about the subject or are too frightened or subdued to argue anything that might detract from the great idea. All the while they forget that it is the negative consequences, not always unforeseen, that decide whether or not something is a success. Attention to the negatives , like environmental damage should be focussed on and yes that (pareto principle) means that 80% of the cost must deal with the problematic 20% and has to be borne, not cut back on. Usually also the consequences have to be recovered and paid for at a later date and always at much greater cost, but that is often when someone else is in charge, the original proponent having moved on. Good project management must always include a review of is it worth continuing, and not being ashamed of putting a stop to it.