Sustainable development in engineering

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie

Published: 13/1/2014

Abstract

Sustainable is a very prominent topic in modern business and research, and the level of prominence exercised on it is because of its capability of ensuring continued growth and profitability of firms. However, the context has expanded beyond just firm application to actual application in fields of learning and practices, and one of the areas where such application has been of great importance is in the field of engineering. This is because professional practices in the engineering field have been identified as having high influence on sustainability of the environment, economy and society as a result of its direct influence on the lives of humanity. As such, the purpose of this paper is to understand the level of influences that engineering as a profession has on sustainability.

Summary

From the researches contained in this paper, it has been described that engineering has a direct influence on the sustainability of the economy, society and environment. This is because engineering activities are used to enhance the productivity of an economy, which will then influence profitability positively. On the same note, such an enhancement can led to depletion of resources and contaminations that will negatively influence sustainability on the long-run, for both the environment and the society. In any case, measured have been pointed out in this paper as the right approach towards ensuring that sustainability is always ensured in the engineering practices.

Introduction

Earth is presently facing numerous issues in the form of natural disasters that underpin the potential sustainability of the human race. Such issues have been noted in the form of global warming – which is currently melting the Arctic region and causing rise in ocean level, which is the direct cause of numerous floods in the world presently. Basically, the issue of global warming, as the most commonly discussed topic in both national and international stage has been recognized as a factor that is caused by a number of variables in the form of reckless harvesting of the natural green world and mismanagement of resources. Beside the issue of global warming, other issues include that that of depletion of natural water by companies, contamination of water, disposal of toxic waste in the natural environment, excessive burning of crude, high pressure on natural resources and a host of other. The significant finding from all the factors discussed above is that engineering practices maintain the link between activities undertaken and their potential to result in such outcome. Without engineering, the impact of businesses on the natural environment would not be so much as the natural human power would not have the potential of inducing such high impact. On that note, it is important to understand how to create sustainability through engineering practices, and this is the main purpose of this paper.

Understanding what sustainability is all about

On a very broad sense, sustainability has been defined as the process of making available the resources needed by the present generation in order to meet their needs, while also making sure that the needs of the future generations are not compromised (McDonough and Braungart, 2002). There is a need for the present generation to be well taken care of, and such needs in the engineering sense arises from advancement in technologies that will aid the overall potential of the present generation meeting their goals of production, distribution and consumption, while at the same hand ensuring that such technologies doesn’t limit the potentials of the future generation to meet their own goals. The implication is that it is good for the needs of the present generation to be satisfied, but such needs should not be provided in such a way that the engineering activities used to provide such needs influences the potentials of the future generation to meet their own needs negatively.

For instance, the concept can be applied in the case of oil and gas industry, where the output from the industry is used to fuel the economy and as such ensuring that the present generation meets its needs of economic development and enhanced production system. However, it is also thought that such activities should not endanger the potential of the future generation to meet their own needs. As such, extra care should be taken to avoid oil spills, pipeline leakages and other activities that might result in the environment being damaged and as such limit the potentials of the future generation to meet their own needs.

Although the concept of sustainability seems to be centred on the environment, the underlying fact is that sustainability is something that extends beyond the environment only. It touched the society and the economy as well. On a societal view, sustainability is all about defining the best approaches to protect the cultural heritage and view of people in the society and ensuring that such cultural values transcends down to the next generation. Cultural can basically be defined as people’s way of life and as such needs to be preserved. The need for preservation of culture is becoming very important in the present economy as a result of the fact that there is a growing case of globalization and internationalization of firm across the globe. As people travel from one country to another, they move with their cultures and the outcome of such cultural movement is that they tend to influence the cultures of other people – which will eventually led to cultural dominance, and in cases where the original culture has been dominated, the end product is that the original culture will slowly fade away, leading to the culture becoming unsustainable for the future generation to enjoy. On the economic aspect, the notion is based on understanding the best approaches that needs to be undertaken in order to ensure that the economy of a given state or business continues to flourish irrespective of the circumstances that might befall such an economy either positively or negative.

Considering the fact that sustainability is a broad scope and stretches down to different aspects of our daily lives, it becomes significant to note that engineering have a strong role to play in ensuring sustainability in our environment, society, and economy. This is because, the engineering world stretches down to all these facets and is the underpinning force that shapes the global world that we live in today. For instance, engineering created media, and media is now shaping the way information are distributed or the way people get informed, which will eventually led to the elimination of the conventional approaches that are inherent in different cultures such as the adoption of “GONGS” and “FIRES” as a means of passing information across different culture. On that note, it is important to understanding how contemporary engineering practices can help to ensure sustainability in all aspects of the human lives.

Creating sustainability through engineering practices

Bruno et al (2008) of the University of Sherbroke proposed a framework work creating sustainability through engineering practices and the framework will be adopted to discuss how the engineering practices can enhance the creation of sustainability.

Figure 1: framework for creating engineering sustainability

Source as adapted from: Bruno et al (2008)

The above framework clearly illustrates the approaches that can be adopted in order to ensure that sustainability is created through engineering practices and a detailed analysis of these approaches will be presented below.

Creating sustainable environment through engineering practices

The general ideas presented under this section is on understanding the best approaches that will be undertaken in order to preserve the biodiversity and ecosystem of any given state. Biodiversity is a definition use to represent all living animals in the environment, and can stretch from those that we can see with our eye such as the mammals, down to those that we can’t see with our eyes such as the microorganism. All these animals are very important for our ecosystem, in the sense that they help maintain stability in the environment and create an interesting unit of experience for us human beings as well as serves as sources of meat to some extent.

The implication is that engineering practices should be done in such a way that the ecosystem is sustainable and the practices of the present generation doesn’t hinder the future generation from meeting their own needs. This is most significant in parasitic animals that depend on other animals as source of food through a mutualistic symbiosis. The fact is that engineering activities threaten the sustainability of the ecosystem and even put some species at the brink of extension. For instance, the form of constructing a bridge that passes through oceans, numerous species are scattered around from their original ecosystem and if these species have no inbuilt adaptive skills, qualities and features, the end point is that they will eventually die either being killed by other species or as a result of their lack of ability to adapt.

As such, engineering practices need to put into consideration the influence of such activities on these species and ensure that their practices are not being built to impact negatively on these species as they are needed in the ecosystem as agents of growth enhances and continued tourist experience for the future generation.

Creating sustainable society through engineering practices

On the societal aspect of sustainability through engineering practices, the focus is on understanding the influence of engineering practices on the society in which we live in. there have been numerous cases of environmental pollutions such as air pollution, water and land pollution that can be linked back to engineering practices. For instance, the cases of oil spillage polluted the land and makes farming difficulty, too much burning of industrial fuel pollute the air and causes numerous health issues, and the dumping of toxic waste into natural sources of water pollutes such water sources. On that note, the implication is that contemporary engineering practices should be done in such a way that it doesn’t endanger the society in any form as such might put the potential of future generations to meet their own needs at risk.

Creating economic sustainability through engineering practices

Just as every other business practices, engineering have a strong role to play in ensuring economic sustainability, and such role is inherent in the business practices of the modern business environment. Basically, the role can be defined in the form that innovation the operation process in order to enhance efficiency and effectiveness of the production process, as well as supporting the human resources with artificial forces that have the potential of performing more than the human forces.

The implication is that enhancement of the production process through a subsequent advancement in engineering. Engineering practices should be able to create new products that have the potentials of enhancing the production processes and reducing the pleasure on human resources, as well as reducing the production cost through an increase in the level of economies of scale. Such technologies should also be capable of creating other technologies and infrastructures (such as transportation and electricity) that will be used to aid the production process. Such an approach will help ensure sustainability for the future generation as advancement in production technologies will mean that the needs of the future generations will be better meet through a subsequent increase in production.

On a conclusive note, sustainability is important for the present economy, and there is a need for business to understand the importance of sustainability in the environment, society and the economy because of its direct influence on the potential of future generations to meet their needs. Engineering is one of such field that plays a significant role in the society and as such can be said to have the highest potential of creating sustainability in the society. Thus, engineers and contemporary engineering practices should be designed in such a way that such activity doesn’t influence the potential of the future generation to meet their needs negatively. This is because, sustainability is necessary for the future to generation to be given a high potential for success and individual growth, as well as the chance to enjoy life in its fullness. 

References

Bruno, G., Roland, L., and Luc, S. (2008), “Sustainable development in engineering: a review of principles and definition of a conceptual framework.” Available at: https://sustainability.water.ca.gov/documents/18/3406673/Sustainable%2Bdevelopment%2Bin%2Bengineering.pdf [Accessed on: 23/05/2013].

McDonough, W., Braungart, M. (2002). Cradle to Cradle. New York: North Point Press.