Engineering: issues, challenges and opportunities for development ...

ENGINEERING: ISSUES CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPMENTin 2009 that the present 60,000 engineers in the country wouldneed to be increased to 200,000 engineers by 2020. 3The greening of engineeringEngineering is one of the most important activities in the contextof climate change mitigation and adaptation, and sustainableor green engineering is one of the major areas of needand growth for engineering. 4 Many countries have alreadyintroduced policies and initiatives for climate change mitigationand adaptation prior to the 2009 United Nations ClimateChange Conference in Copenhagen, and together with thespecific outcomes of COP15, this will be one of the greatestdemands and challenges that engineering has ever faced. Oneof the first challenges is to make sure that there are enoughappropriately qualified and experienced engineers to meetthis demand; this will require the development of new courses,training materials and systems of accreditation. Young peoplewill hopefully be attracted to such courses, and this will help toraise overall awareness of the role and importance of engineeringin development. Young people should also be encouragedto go into engineering, as engineering will be at the very centreof efforts to build a carbon-free future.In terms of mitigation and adaptation, the investment in technologyand infrastructure will be significant, and with a likelydoubling of coal use by 2030, the need for carbon capture andsequestration and related technologies will be on a scale ofthe petrochemical and fossil-fuel industry. Many countries arelooking to (re)develop nuclear power generation, which willbe equally challenging, as the nuclear industry has declinedover the last decades and many new engineers will be required.The renewable energy sector has been developing over thelast decade, and will need to develop further to keep up withdemand. The same applies to the housing and transportationsectors. The demand for engineers will increase dramatically.While increasing market demand will help attract young peopleinto engineering, it will take over five years to developcourses to produce graduates, therefore urgent governmentaction is required now to support course development andassociated R&D and innovation. Although investment in currenttechnology, rather than R&D for new technology, is thepressing issue, new technology will be required in the decadesto come and governments need to invest now to encouragethe development of R&D and industry in this direction; thenext main wave of technological development. At the sametime, developed country governments need to support thedevelopment of R&D and associated industries in developingcountries, and to minimize brain drain, which may helpaddress developed country human resource needs, but will3 Prof. Datuk Chuah Hean Teik, President of the Institute of Engineers Malaysia, at theIEM 50th anniversary in 2009.4 Morton, Oliver. Wanted: Green Engineers, The World in 2010, The Economist, December2009.make matters worse in developing countries, where increasingnumbers of engineers will also be required.Need for better numbersThe data and examples discussed above also indicate thatstatistics and indicators for engineering are in serious needof refining and redefining. The data for engineering is collectedunder guidelines developed particularly by the OECDNESTI group (National Experts on Science and TechnologyIndicators), and is collected and analysed at such an overalllevel as to be of limited usefulness in answering many ofthe questions relating to engineering raised above. Theseguidelines have been developed with particular reference tothe situation in OECD countries relating to R&D (the FrascatiManual), innovation (the Oslo Manual) and humanresources (the Canberra Manual). Other information is alsoused, for example, for enrolment and graduation from educationdata (International Standard Classification of Education,ISCED) and labour force surveys (from the InternationalLabour Organization, ILO).The data, for example, combine ‘scientists and engineers’without disaggregating into science and engineering or thevarious fields of science and engineering, and focus on R&Dwithout specifying the division of research and developmentand the respective roles of science and engineering. Data onpatents, scientific publications and innovation are presentedwithout reference to the identity of their authors in scienceor engineering (and the fact that publishing papers is less of acareer priority for engineers than for scientists), as well as whatconstitutes innovation, who does it and where it takes place.While the origins of international trade in high-tech productsin various fields of engineering should be more apparent, aclearer indication and attribution of this, and the origins anddestinations of exports and imports, would also be most usefulin analysing issues related to the technological balance ofpayments.These present indicators are of limited use in analysing theneed for, types and numbers of engineers required at nationaland international levels to promote development. Statisticsand indicators need to be refined and in some cases redefinedto allow better disaggregation between science and engineeringand the various fields of engineering and engineeringemployment (e.g. industry, teaching or research). This willfacilitate a better understanding of the role of engineers inR&D, patenting, publishing and innovation, the contributionof engineers and engineering to international trade and therole of engineering in development. It will also help dramaticallyin providing data for policy-makers and planners.Considering the importance of engineering, science and technologyin the knowledge society and economy, it is surprisingthat better data is not available on these most important driv-312