The document discusses the role and responsibilities of engineers in sustainable development. It states that engineers can contribute significantly through developing sustainable technologies that minimize environmental impacts and maximize social benefits. However, the document also argues that engineers should not view their role narrowly and have a greater responsibility to society. They can provide expertise, collaborate with others, and work to balance environmental, economic and social factors in their projects and decisions. Overall, the document advocates for engineers taking a holistic, active role in sustainable development beyond just technology development.

1. Sustainability and Engineering

2. Definition of Sustainability
Sustainability is… “development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs”
Sustainable Engineering
➢ Maximize social benefit while minimizing ecological impact
➢ SOCIAL EFFECT: Community activities, employment rates,
immigration...
➢ ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES: Business growth, employment rates,
inflation…
➢ ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS: - Environmental
contaminations, endangered wildlife… - Birth defects, death
rates, severe asthma

3. What is technology?
• Technology is about skills and knowledge of
human beings on how to use natural
resources and ecosystems for their benefit
• modifying environment, controlling it and
adapting to it
• Technology is about systems, equipment
and artifacts that people use to satisfy their
daily needs. Technology is not artificial.

4. The role of engineers
in sustainable
development?

5. Engineers in society
• Traditional view: Engineering is value-free.
Engineers are responsible for the functionality of
technology, it is the users who are responsible
for the actual use.
• Engineers as employees: do as they are told,
loyal to their employer
• However, at least in Finland engineers work
mostly in R&D, product development, sales and
marketing or strategic design and management
act as experts and decision makers

6. The invisible profession?
• According to Michelsen (1999), in
Finland, engineers have chosen an
invisible role in society
• Technological solutions
– part of infrastructure
– Invisible?

7. ENGINEERS RESPONSIBILITIES TOWARDS
ENVIRONMENT
Scientific research continues to provide in-format ion
about the links between human health and environmental
quality. Essential components of life are air, water and
food, which provide potential pathways for contaminants
to have an effect on our health. Air, water and soil
pollutions exposure has been linked to various
diseases/disorders to name few cancer, lupus, immune
diseases, allergies, and asthma, problems in reproduction
and birth defects, allergic reactions, nervous system
disorders, hypersensitivity and decreased diseases
resistance.

8. Air Pollution
Air pollution is a great threat to our sustainable environment.
Engineers in every country of the world should try to,
• Cut down the release of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide,
carbon dioxide and mercury through regulatory programs
according to established targets and time frames.
• Involve yourself in national and international initiatives to
address trans-boundary air issues.
• Work to meet standards for two primary components of
smog(formed mainly above urban centres, is composed
mainly of tropospheric ozone (O3) ground level ozone and
particulate matter.
• Build up air-shed management plans and team-up with large
industrial facilities to monitor transport and deposition from
major sources.

9. Water Pollution
Safe drinking water is another challenge for many developing countries where engineers in
the world can contribute a good deal on this issue. So, engineers should do the followings,
• Resolve quality and quantity issues of water for agriculture and fisheries sectors,
• Develop a scaffold for safeguard water resources and aquatic habitat that builds on the
drinking water strategy,
• Consult with the Municipal/Public Works Association of relevant region while developing
guidelines, standards and regulations for issues related to municipal water and
wastewater ,
• Employ a government-wide approach to water problems through the Interdepartmental
Drinking Water Management Committee,
• Develop, modify and upgrade the ambient water monitoring system with proper
maintenance,
• Team-up with the Department of Health to tackle issues related to contaminants in
drinking water,
• Wastewater issues to be addresses by working with municipal and domestic partners,
• Be a support system to municipalities for their water and wastewater infrastructure
programs, and for land use planning in water supply areas.

10. Land Pollution
Hazardous substances in water, air, and soil cause noteworthy health perils. The
concerned government is devoted to minimize the environmental impacts of such
materials and protecting country’s health. In this regards engineers will
• Promote pollution prevention in efficient way,
• Validate risk-based administrative approaches to spotlight efforts where they
are most needed,
• Bring up to date existing directives controlling perilous substances and
eliminating regulatory duplication,
• Promote effective utilization, storage, handling, and discarding of harmful
substances,
• Apply the "polluter pays" principle to users of hazardous substances,
• Encourage stewardship by manufacturers to promote proper lifecycle
management of hazardous substances,
• Make joint efforts with other authorities to perk up treatment of contaminated
sites and promote sustainable redevelopment,
• Promote early detection and response to land quality issues through legislated
requirements for mandatory reporting of site contamination.

11. Components of Sustainable environment
Society
Sustainability
state
Economy
Environment
Just
Health
Efficiency

12. SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF ENGINEERS
• Be cautious to the cost reductions that masquerade as value engineering.
• Being creative and innovational.
• Being sure about the knowledge of needs and wants.
• Commitment of risk assessment experts to safety assessments or ethical risk.
• Contributing one’s services to worthy, non – profit groups and projects
• Declining work on a particular project or for a particular company.
• Right things been done with the right decisions.
• Valuable and competent, scheduling and administration.
• Engineering school’s commitment for educating future engineers about their social and moral
responsibilities.
• Commitment of engineers in designing and developing sustainable technologies
• Explicit care and concern about technology’s impact on nature and the environment.
• Principles of sustainable development followed, while thinking about any technical and engineering
designs.
• Guarantee the safety and wellbeing to the public.
• Guarantee the society’s fund and resources concerning technology are well used.
• Honoring the precautionary principles to take any steps in engineering designs
• Individual and organizational apprehension about any engineering projects and its impact on the
society.
• Looking for a balanced solution.
• On the lookout for engagement from all stakeholders.
• Participating in democratic procedures for technology decision making and policy management.
• Practicing the engineers preach.
• Promoting the principled development enthusiastically and use of technologies. Provide expert
advice to non experts.
• Offer security measures for whistleblowers.

13. The 12 Principles of Engineering
for Sustainable Development
are:

14. Principle 1
Look beyond your own locality and the immediate future
• In considering the effects of our decisions on the wider
world, we need to:
• identify the potential positive and negative impacts of
our proposed actions, not only locally and soon but
also outside our immediate local environment,
organization and context, and into the future
• seek to minimize the negative, while maximizing the
positive, both locally and more widely, and into the
future

15. Principle 2
Innovate and be creative
• A sustainable development approach is creative, innovative and
broad, and thus does not mean following a specific set of rules. It
requires an approach to decision-making that strikes a balance
between environmental, social and economic factors.
• we are not seeking a ‘holy grail’ of a single ‘correct’ solution
• alternative solutions can be identified that fit with the sustainable
development approach
• it is very difficult to predict with certainty how these alternatives will
work into the future, so we need to provide options and flexibility
for change and other action in the future
• there are no guarantees that our solutions will be truly sustainable
• we therefore must do our best with the skills, knowledge and
resources we have at our disposal now .

16. Principle 3
Seek a balanced solution
Approaches like the ‘three pillars’ and the ‘capitals’ seek
to deliver economic, social and environmental success
all at the same time, and so seek to avoid any product,
process or project that yields an unbalanced solution. This
could be one that generates significant environmental
harm, that generates social disquiet or that generates
economic loss or spends public funds inefficiently,
because each of these should be characterized as
unsustainable.

17. Principle 4
Seek engagement from all stakeholders
– Society will ultimately say what is needed or
wanted for any development, sustainable or
otherwise. So reaching decisions in this area
requires:
• engagement of stakeholders to bring their
different views, perceptions, knowledge and skills
to bear on the challenge being addressed
• professional engineers to participate actively in
the decisionmaking as citizens as well as in their
professional roles

18. Principle 5
Make sure you know the needs and wants
• Effective decision-making in engineering for sustainable
development is only possible when we know what is needed or
wanted – the framework of the problem, issue or challenge to be
tackled. This should be identified as clearly as possible, including
identifying any legal requirements and constraints. We should use
teamwork and assistance of immediate colleagues to improve
problem definition.
• It is important to recognise that many engineering challenges
are driven by what people want to have – such as even better
motor cars – rather than just what they need – a means of
transport. In addition,‘wants’ are often characterised as ‘needs’
when they are in fact just perceived needs, and a more modest
solution may ultimately be acceptable.

19. Principle 6
Plan and manage effectively In planning our engineering
projects,we need to:
• express our aims in sufficiently open-ended terms so as not to
preclude the potential for innovative solutions as the project
develops
• assemble and critically review historical evidence and forward
projections, and weigh the evidence for relevance and importance
to the plan
• encourage creative ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking
• define the desired outcome in terms of an appropriate balance
between the economic, environmental and social factors identified
earlier
• recognise that ideas that may not be immediately practicable can
stimulate research for the next project, but also that they need to be
properly recorded if they are to be acted upon

20. Principle 7
Give sustainability the benefit of any doubt
• This encapsulates the ‘precautionary principle’ and, to be
implemented, forces us to – address the future impacts of today’s
decisions. So we need to:
• demonstrate that improved sustainability will result from the actions
proposed
• act with caution where we consider that the effects of our
decisions may be permanent and/or if we do not have a full
scientific understanding of the issue or challenge being considered
• only discount the disadvantages and benefits of future events or
impacts when they’re very uncertain
• recognise that sustainable development depends on investing for
jam tomorrow and for bread and butter today.

21. Principle 8
If polluters must pollute… then they must pay as well
• The environment belongs to us all and its free use for absorption of
our wastes or its unfettered exploitation are not sustainable. The
adverse, polluting effects of any decision should, in some way, be
paid for or compensated for by the proponent of an engineering
project, scheme or development; they should not be transferred to
others without fair compensation. In addition, it may be necessary to
anticipate future pollution prevention legislation if a long-term
project is to be sustainable.
• The challenge that this Principle thus presents is how to define the
‘cost’ or compensation that is appropriate. To determine how much
should be paid, or how much compensatory work should be done,
we need to work with costs that fully reflect the social and
environmental implications of a decision, and tools to undertake
such calculations are now available and being developed.

22. Principle 9
Adopt a holistic, ‘cradle-to-grave’ approach To deliver this
approach, the effects on sustainability throughout the whole life-
cycle of a product or infrastructure scheme should be
systematically evaluated. We need to:
• use whole-life-cycle tools to improve our decision-making: whole-
lifecycle environmental assessment, whole-life-cycle costing, and
assessment of the social impacts over the whole life time of the
engineering challenge we are addressing–sometimes called
assessment of inter-generational equity– where the impacts of our
decisions on future generations are considered alongside the
present
• handle uncertainty by keeping open as many future options as
practicable
• ensure that the design is maintainable and that the materials are
adaptable for re-use or recycling

23. Principle 10
Do things right, having decided on the right thing to do
• Adhering to the Principles explained so far should ensure that right
decisions from a sustainability point of view have been made in
relation to the circumstances that apply. The implementation of
these right decisions must then pay full regard to doing things right,
again from a sustainability point of view. To deliver this Principle, we
need to:
– retain the sustainability focus on the intended outcome right
through the implementation of the solution
– recognise that the intermediate processes of construction,
manufacture, production and transport can be resource-intensive
and need to be managed with an active sustainability orientation –
etc.

24. Principle 11
Beware cost reductions that masquerade as value engineering
We are unlikely to arrive at our best decisions first time every time.
So we need to challenge ourselves and refine those decisions,
whilst remaining focused on the intended outcome. We therefore
need to:
– avoid sacrificing the sustainability desires incorporated in a
design when seeking cost reductions
– include any adverse effects on sustainability in the ‘value
equation’ and value engineering
– be self-critical of our own fundamental assumptions and values
– be prepared to challenge our and others’ existing assumptions
– re-examine first preferences and submit them to re-appraisal

25. Principle 12
Practice what you preach.
One’s own everyday practices should not be at
variance with what is being asked of others
– you must not expect more of others than you do of
yourself. Be prepared to be accountable for your design
and engineering, and uphold by example the beliefs it
reflects. Change yourself before you seek to change
others.

26. Following principles have been agreed upon to achieve
sustainable development
• Living within the environmental goals,
• Ensuring a strong , healthy and justified society,
• Promotion of good governance,
• Achieving a sustainable with an efficient economy, using science responsibly.
• Engineers have a responsibility to maximize the value of their activity to build a sustainable planet. In order
perceive attainable goal and recognition of the changes over time and demand of the society.
• Empathies the important potential role for engineering
• Empathies about the environmental limits and finite resources
• Reduce the demand of resources
• Reduction of waste production by using effectively the resources that are used
• Make use of systems and products which reduce embedded carbon, energy and water use, waste and
pollution, etc.
• Adoption of full life cycle assessment as normal practice including the supply chain,
• Adopt strategies such as salvaging, reprocessing, decommissioning and discarding of components and
materials,
• During Design stage itself minimization of any adverse impacts on sustainability .
• Carrying out a comprehensive risk assessment prior to starting of the project.
• Risk assessment should ensure and includes the potential environmental, economical and societal
impacts, way ahead of the natural life of the engineering venture.
• Monitoring systems to measure any environmental, social and economical impacts of engineering
projects so it can be identified at an early stage

27. Summary
• Engineers have a central role in sustainable
development
• developing sustainable technology (but that is not
all, engineers have potential for much more)
• Technology is an essential part of society
• but it is not the only thing
• engineers should take on a more active role in
society
• sharing own expertise
• collaborating with others

28. Thank
you!