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

ENGINEERING: EMERGING ISSUES AND CHALLENGEStheir engineering knowledge. They are motivated by a senseof the future, and are able to interact with other disciplines,with communities and with political leaders, to design andimplement solutions. In this context, an often overlooked butessential responsibility of engineering is to help recognize,prevent or mitigate possible unwanted consequences of newtechnological developments, such as the onset of tropical diseasearising from the damming of rivers in tropical regions,the destruction of thin soils created by mechanized farmingequipment, or the social instabilities caused by too rapid anintroduction of automation.Training a sufficient number of engineering professionalsfocused on development should become a high priority as acritical ingredient in the ability of the global community to dealwith the emerging and urgent issues that confront it today.163.3 A changing climate and engineers of the futureCharlie HargrovesIn his closing words to the Australia 2020 Summit, Prime MinisterKevin Rudd said that ‘Climate change is the overarching moral,economic, scientific, and technological challenge of our age.’Responding to the challenge of climate change provides both thegreatest challenge and the greatest opportunity the engineeringprofession has ever faced, and this dual nature may turn out tobe the most important ‘convenient truth’ ever realized.When considering The Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange’s statement from 2007 that ‘the world has less thaneight years to arrest global warming or risk what many scientistswarn could be catastrophic changes to the planet’, it would beeasy to despair. However this is balanced by a growing realizationof the vast opportunities such a focus can deliver, such asthat ‘Creating the low-carbon economy will lead to the greatesteconomic boom in the United States since it mobilized forthe Second World War’, as stated by the former US PresidentBill Clinton in late 2007.In the last two years there has been a significant shift in theglobal conscience on these issues and few now believe thatnot taking action is a viable approach; some even consider it adisastrous, costly and amoral one. The daunting question thatmany are now asking is ‘are we actually destroying the worldwe are creating?’ These messages are not new, however, in lightof compelling evidence of both the challenges and opportunitiesfor over thirty years now there is still hesitancy; there is stilla lack of action on a broad scale, there are even efforts to blocksuch progress. Much of this results from a lack of understanding,a lack of education and competency in the proven economicpolicies, scientific knowledge, and technological anddesign solutions currently available.Rather than seeking a ‘silver bullet’ solution – the one engineeringanswer to save the world – it is becoming clear thatwhat we need is more like a ‘silver shotgun’ approach, an integratedsolutions-based engineering portfolio of options, alltravelling in the same direction. The engineering professionmust now focus the creativity and ingenuity that has deliveredtoday’s incredible levels of human and industrial developmenton the task of delivering sustainable engineering and developmentsolutions.Engineers of the future will focus on leading efforts to reducepollution, first by reducing material flows and then by creatingcritical knowledge and skill sets to redesign technologies, processes,infrastructure and systems to be both efficient, productiveand effective.The challenge for engineers of the future is to understandthe science, engineering and design issues vital to a comprehensiveunderstanding of how national economies make thetransition to a low emissions future. Given the rapid growthof greenhouse gas emissions globally there is a real need for agreater level of urgency and sophistication around the realitiesof delivering cost effective strategies, policies and engineeringdesigns to achieve emissions stabilization globally.The Stern Review explored in detail the concept of stabilizationtrajectories and pointed out that there are two distinctphases: 1) global emissions need to stop growing i.e. emissionslevels would peak and begin to decline; and 2) there wouldneed to be a sustained reduction of annual greenhouse gasemissions across the entire global economy. The Stern Reviewstates that ‘The longer action is delayed, the harder it willbecome. Delaying the peak in global emissions from 2020to 2030 would almost double the rate of [annual] reductionneeded to stabilize at 550ppm CO 2e. A further ten-year delaycould make stabilization at 550ppm CO 2e impractical, unlessearly actions were taken to dramatically slow the growth inemissions prior to the peak.’ 1716 This material is based on a submission by the author and colleagues of The NaturalEdge Project to the Garnaut Climate Change Review initiated by the Australian FederalGovernment. The full submission can be downloaded at http://www.naturaledgeproject.net/Documents/TNEPSubmission.pdf(Accessed: 5 May 2010).17 Stern, N. 2006. The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, Cambridge UniversityPress, Cambridge, Chp 8: The Challenge of Stabilisation, p 10. Available at http://www.sternreview.org.uk/ (Accessed: 5 May 2010).59