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

ENGINEERING: ISSUES CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPMENTassociated with it. Two billion people lack access to a basicpower supply and an equivalent number lack access to safewater. The UN target is to halve that number by 2015. Safewater for one billion people by 2015 means connecting morethan one third of a million people per day, every day, for thenext eight years. Can it be done? And if so, how? What limitsour response?The limiting factors are not a lack of engineering knowledgeand technology, or knowing what needs to be done, but findingways of applying that engineering technology, buildinglocal capacity to ensure its effective delivery, managing andfinancing it, and ensuring that its application is maintained. Slums are often at themargins of engineered infrastructure.The construction of large-scale hydropower schemes hasdeclined, primarily due to concerns over their social and environmentalimpacts. There are exceptions, the most significantexample is the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River whichcontains a storage reservoir of some 600 km in length, providingflood control, producing 18 GW of hydropower, butalso displacing almost two million people and resulting in theloss of valuable archaeological and cultural sites, biodiversityloss and environmental damage. 12 Projects such as the ThreeGorges Dam inescapably place the engineer in a difficult situation.Engineering is not an apolitical activity and may neverhave been so, and the engineer needs all the skills of discernment,judgement and conflict resolution.An energy supply for Africa is a prize worth seeking, ‘In manyAfrican countries, lack of energy security feeds into a cycleof poverty. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it isunacceptable for millions of people to live without access toelectricity!’ (Claude Mandil, IEA). 13© P. JowittInfrastructure development offers a vital opportunity forcapacity-building, technological learning, and the developmentof local businesses, ‘Infrastructure uses a wide range oftechnologies and complex institutional arrangements. Governmentstraditionally view infrastructure projects from astatic perspective… they seldom consider that building railways,airports, roads and telecommunications networks couldbe structured to promote technological, organizational andinstitutional learning.’ 14Building the infrastructure to deliver the UN MDGs is notabout a single project, but about the delivery of many; eachone is complex in itself, but at the right scale and with the rightplanning, is perfectly feasible. The UN MDGs will only be metif they are treated as a series of projects, each of which needs aproject management plan and which the engineering professionis well placed to help deliver.Is there a model for this? Are there development models thathave been successful in dealing with issues akin to those ofthe developing world? Perhaps there are. For example, in manydeprived inner city areas in the developed world, the issuesare broadly similar: run down infrastructure, high unemployment,an economically disadvantaged local population, highcrime rates and drug use, and a dysfunctional local economy.One solution to such cases was the establishment of specialpurpose development corporations, financially independentof the local municipality but ultimately accountable. There willbe other models as well.So this is the challenge:Delivering the Millennium Development GoalsThe energy needs of the developing world bring us back tothe issues of world poverty. Lack of access to basic infrastructureis at the root of world poverty and the human tragedies‘To develop an action-based project plan, to ensure that theUN MDGs are met while achieving sustainability worldwide.’Yes, the Great Age of Engineering is NOW!12 The International Rivers Network, Three Gorges Dam, see http://www.irn.org/programs/threeg/13 Claude Mandil, Executive Director, The International Energy Agency. http://www.iea.org/textbase/papers/2003/ african_energy.pdf (Accessed: 29 May 2010).14 Professor Tony Ridley and Yee-Cheong Lee, Infrastructure, innovation and development,chp 5, Going for Growth: Science, Technology and Innovation in Africa, CalestousJuma (ed.) Published by the Smith Institute, 2005.42