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

ENGINEERING: ISSUES CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPMENTThe rise and fall of engineering and prospectsfor resurgenceEngineering at UNESCO rose in the early years to be the largestof the three initial and continuing theme areas of UNESCO,together with the basic sciences and the environmental andecological sciences. Over the last fifty years the engineeringprogramme has had around one hundred professional andsupport staff, a regular programme budget of over US$50million and extra-budgetary funding of over US$200 million(mainly UNDP special funds in the mid-1960s to the early1990s). Engineering at UNESCO began to decline in real termsin the 1990s (in terms of staff and budget), which reflectedthe decline of the Science Sector and indeed of UNESCO overthis period, and was attributed to various external and internalfactors. The 1980s marked a general decline in overseasaid, the withdrawal of the US and the UK in 1984 that precipitateda funding crisis in UNESCO, the fall of the Berlin Wall in1989 that led to the end of the Cold War and changing internationalclimate, and UNDP special funds began to declinefrom the late 1980s with the establishment and developmentof the Operations Division of UNDP. There were also variousinternal factors at UNESCO. The Natural Sciences Sector isperhaps the least well understood sector in UNESCO, andengineering – for various reasons – is less well understoodthan science. Engineering is distinct from science, though it isconsidered as part of science in UNESCO, and with a decliningscience budget, science issues, priorities and ‘science’ policyhave tended to predominate (even though engineering policyis a significant part of science policy, as discussed in section4.5.2). This situation reflects the limited numbers of scientistsand engineers in the decision-making bodies of UNESCO suchas the Executive Board and General Conference where educationinterests tend to predominate. In this way, the status andchallenges faced by engineering at UNESCO mirrors thosefaced by engineering in governments, organizations and societiesworldwide.Other internal factors leading to the decline of engineering atUNESCO include the choice of programme priorities basedon personal interaction and lobbying rather than a strategicapproach based on broader policy issues and a more democraticdetermination of needs and priorities. This was compoundedin the late 1980s and 1990s by the focus on theWorld Solar Programme. While the idea to focus is eminentlyunderstandable, adequate human and financial resourcesand significant substantive results are required, and shouldnot be to the exclusion of other programme interests, otherwiseprogramme activities may become theme areas withlittle real substance, peripheral to core engineering issues,with the risk, perhaps not surprising, of limited programmeachievements. This contributed significantly to the decline ofengineering and the administrative merger of engineering intothe Basic and Engineering Sciences Division in 2002, with obviouspotential consequences for the future of engineering inUNESCO. It is clear that the programmes in UNESCO, with themost secure budgets and effective lobbying, are those linkedto international and intergovernmental programmes such asthe Man and the Biosphere Programme (created in 1971), theInternational Hydrological Programme (1975) and the IntergovernmentalOceanographic Commission (1960). While thisadvantage for programmes to have such an international backgroundis acknowledged, there is also a disinclination to createnew international programmes due to human and financialresource constraints.In this context, it is certainly noteworthy that a proposal for afeasibility study for an ‘International Engineering Programme’was made by South Africa and adopted with significant supportin the 2009 General Conference and Executive Boardas part of the effort to continue and develop engineeringactivities at UNESCO into the new millennium (which itselfhas significant external support). This follows and reinforcesa proposal from the United States for the development of‘Cross-Sectoral Activities in Technical Capacity Building’, presentedto and approved unanimously at the Executive Boardin April 2005, in order to focus on capacity-building in thebasic sciences and mathematics, engineering and the watersciences (with a focus in engineering on activities that included‘strengthening of the existing engineering programme, includingtraining educators for developing countries, support ofworkshops for educators in curriculum development, bestpractices, and quality assurance, and development of appropriatecollaborations with industry.’ This was the first proposalfrom the United States since its return to UNESCO in 2003. Itis to be hoped that these proposals will support a resurgenceand strengthening of engineering in UNESCO and around theworld, with the development of international programmeactivities in capacity-building and engineering applicationsfor poverty reduction and sustainable development, climatechange mitigation and adaptation. UNESCO has a uniquemandate and mission in the natural sciences, including engineeringand technology, to assist Member States, and especiallydeveloping countries.36