Engineering education for sustainable development: a review of international progress. International Symposium for Engineering Education
Sustainable development is a topic that has been causing a lot of debate since 1980s. Until today, there is no one single definition of sustainable development that is accepted globally. Different groups and research institutions have defined it depending on their understanding and the findings of their study. Generally, sustainable development is the possibility that human beings and other living organisms can forever flourish on the planet. The American Society of Civil Engineers defined sustainability as “A compilation of environmental, social and economic circumstances that permits all the individuals of a community to handle plus improve its standard of living by giving them the same level of viewpoints for the predictable future without degrading the amount, characteristics or the presence of natural, financial and social sources.” Sustainable engineering on the other hand is used to refer to the practices behind the promotion economic, social and environmental sustainability through greater resource efficiency and reduced pollution (Wong, and Fan, 2013) . Mechanical engineering is viewed by some people as the tool of measuring development in a region or a country. Professional engineers therefore have a big role to play in order to achieve sustainability. They must enhance the safety, health and welfare of all living organisms through minimized use of natural resources as well as paying attention to sustaining the resources for the next generations.
According to (Byrne, Desha, Fitzpatrick and Hargroves, 2010) the terms “sustainability” and “sustainable development” are often used as synonyms yet none of them has a universally agreed meaning. It is for this reason that they focus on Brundtland commission report of 1987 definition which has attained universal traction. The report views sustainable development as the “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” they hold that majority of the people continue to liberally interpret sustainable development hence making it difficult to realize its sustainable future. The article views sustainable development as method of modifying the present economic developments. All the efforts made in sustainable development are aimed at reducing un-sustainability in the society. It emphases the need to capitalize on approaches whose objective is improve efficiency. Although technological advancement is crucial in the entire process, working without conceptual change may not cause any notable impact. According to the authors, behavior, culture and technological advancement are important in engineering sustainable development (Karatzoglou, B., 2013).
Many organizations around the globe have raised their concern of keeping up with the daily changes by building collaborations in order to make progress. The authors note since 1990s many organizations have come together and this move has lead to continuous active promotion of the engineering vision which is to address all the challenges in the 21st century. In the past decade, a good progress has been made globally. Although engineering education for sustainable development is offered in many institutions, it particularly focuses on the smaller systems especially those limited to a product or a firm (Sachs, 2015). There is a need to direct more resources and attention to address broader and larger systems. For example the courses may critically and closely examine the relationship between industrial and non industrial sector or between various industrial sectors or firms. It should concentrate on dealing with the geographical setting of a place, industrial ecology, as well as social, economic and cultural perceptive of the people. The curriculum developers should consider teaching sustainability engineering to lower classes rather than concentrating all the resources to upper division and undergraduate students. There is a great urge of having a better structured transition to ensure the engineering graduates are equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to meet changing needs (Carley, and Christie, 2017)
The article majors on the findings of a research project whose aim was to find out and understand the relationship between some particular elements in management. The focus is on the sustainable technological innovation, competitiveness and corporate performance. (Gomes, Kruglianskas, and Scherer, 2011) manage to present the characteristics and the main indicators found in a survey that was done in Brazil. The article gives some guidelines for any firm that may be seeking to integrate and manage different sources of innovation dedicated to sustainable development. The article describes acceleration of technological and organizational learning as one of the key changes facing the firms in developing countries. If they can manage to accelerate their learning then they can easily access the globe market. It also notes that the process of innovation may be stimulated by either internal or external forces. The ideas may be from clients, competitors, suppliers or other firms. For organizational prosperity and sustainable development innovation is quite critical. Using external sources such as universities, corporate research and consumer to initiate innovation is yielding some substantial results. The authors concluded that many organizations are lacking a good strategy to manage the external sources despite majority of them resorting to them as their sources of innovation. Several informal and formal relationships determine the capability of an organization to increase its knowledge through the external sources ( Lozano, and Lozano 2014).
Some organizations have come up with different competitive strategies that are based on a number of sustainable development theories. Among the strategies just a few focus on innovation which is key element in implementation. Competitive strategies cannot be effective without consideration of the environmental, economic and social aspects to achieve sustainable development. The entire process corporate social-environmental responsibility is continuous and progressive. It involves the consumer, suppliers, partners, community, government all the stakeholders and the environment itself. The certification of socio-environment was as a result of concern from the social and environmental movements in USA Europe about the social and environmental impact of products from tropical countries especially wood. Despite the progress in the past decades to have better strategies for sustainable development in place, there is need for the present day organization to effectively utilize their resources. This call for the organizations to plan, develop and implement new strategies about the environment sustainable development based on the effective use of the little available resources (Zheng, Shen, and Wang, 2014).
For the sustainability of a development to work effectively, it must be in a position to meet the present needs without interfering with the ability of the future generation to meet their needs. If a development pays very little or no attention to the social, economic and environmental effects then it is considered unsustainable. Development is derived by growth and it must linked to the production of a community or a country. In case the production is done within a sustainable path, the sustainability can be easily maintained. In most cases engineering is viewed tool of measuring development in a country. tries to highlight the (Rahman,2013) responsibilities roles and what the engineers need to achieve sustainable development. He points out that sustainability is critical in order to ensure that the next generations have enough resources to meet there own needs. Balance must be achieved to ensure the living standards of the future generation are not jeopardized hence threatening their survival. The paper discusses the three major components of sustainability; economic, social and environmental sustainability. It looks at what each of them means and how important it is to work towards them. Rahma holds that mechanical engineers play the most important role in achieving the desired sustainable development.
Type Role of Mechanical Engineers in Sustainable Development
In order to achieve economic sustainability economic development is a prerequisite therefore the need for growth is paramount. Poverty is main barrier that slows down economic growth of most countries. Poverty causes individuals to have low levels of income therefore the banks and other organizations invests little to the economy which consequently leads to slow economic growth. The paper has highlighted some effects of low income to development. People who have low income don’t have enough to spend for their family’s healthcare or even on the education of their children. This leads to low human capital due to the small number of health workforce. It results in low productivity in the economy hence low wages (Mulder, 2017). .
It is generally not possible to totally separate the economic and environmental issues because they are very much interlinked. Every production is aimed at meeting some human needs and therefore they must come at a cost. It is the environment that gives room for everything to be produced. We end to sacrifice the environment in so many ways such as releasing the carbon emission to the atmosphere, deforestation etc. Every year the rate of deforestation has been increasing hence disrupting the carbon cycle hence leading to global warming which is a calamity (Mihelcic, Zimmerman, and Auer, 2014) .
Social sustainability means the country is peaceful, healthy and running smoothly. It is the responsibilities of the administrators to ensure a balance between the social and economic sustainability. There is a great urge for the government to ensure all people are given the necessary resources such as good health care facilities, good means of transport and education to reduce the cases of poor living standards. Such initiatives increase the productivity levels hence improving g the economy.
In all human activities and development sustainability is one of the most important and critical issues. Engineering is crucial for the general sustainability since it involves economic and social activities, living standards as well as their impact to the environment. The article discusses some of the factors should be considered to ensuring sustainability. They include; adopting environmental stewardship in all the activities of engineering, enhance the proper use of resources and efficient engineering processes and selecting the resources appropriately bearing in mind the criteria of sustainability (Charles Schmidheiny, and Watts, 2017)
According to (Rosen, 2012) engineering is an important sector that plays a role in determining the well being of a society, living standards of people, economic development, cultural development and environment. As sustainable development continues to become a concern in many countries, engineering is continuously evolving to address ll the modern human needs. Overall sustainability is defined in three major distinct components which are social sustainability, economic sustainability and environmental sustainability (Keesstra, et al 2016). Rosen argues that if the three are conserved different entities they take the society to different directions. In other words he holds that economic sustainability should not be achieved at the expense of either the social or environmental sustainability. Sustainable development around the world can only be achieved if enough and proper resources are simultaneously direct to achieve economic, environmental and social sustainability (Li, Yang, and Lam, 2013). It is important to note engineering is not one of the three distinct components of sustainability but it is indirectly linked to them all. It uses resources to run most of the world’s economic activities in transportation, industry, commercial etc. the resources used engineering such as water, fuels and minerals are derived from environment while the waste products from its activities in most cases get released to the environment (Singh, 2015). Engineering allows people to have a good living standards as well as social and cultural development. It is a fact that all countries use engineering services which must use resources. This continues to increase the need to have a stable sustainable development (Spangenberg, 2013).
Although engineering sustainability is important, it has not been well understood. It’s good to understand how the sustainability concept works with the profession. The article examines some of the main factors that must be dealt with to achieve sustainability in engineering. The author illustrates the need for the engineering activities to be looked at more closely to ensure the evolution in the profession matches the changes in other human activities Clark et al (2016).
The human race exists in a society where thierlife matters to them more than anything else under the sun. people are much concerned about their health and give a lot of attention to the air they breathe, the water they drink the type and condition of food that they eat as well as their peace and security. Their livelihoods give room for enjoying live and bringing up healthy children. Parents focus at building and gathering much wealth both natural and manmade assets for the generations to come. The concern about the increasing levels of poverty, the environment, the resources and the general long-term future continues to grow. This concerns area a result of social unrest, spread of diseases environmental degradation and population growth. Chaharbaghi, and Willis,(1999) views sustainable development as a bridge to fill the gap between the real and the ideal world. They reveal sustainable development in terms of the limitations, risks as well as the opportunities of the modern variables images to make it a valid idea. More emphases should be directed to making sustainable development a reality rather than a mere idea. People must ensure sustainability in three major sectors of human life. This is because all that a human being is concerned about revolves around economic stability, environmental stability and social stability. Despite the efforts and resources directed at evaluating the social, economic and environmental sustainability for the last two decades much is yet to be achieved. One of the major challenges is coming up with the globally accepted definition for sustainable development in order to help the stakeholders to effectively address all the issues effectively (Lozano 2013). There is every need for more attention, studies and resources to be direct to sustainability in order to explore its full potential.
Conclusion:
It is clear that sustainability involves various disciplines therefore its achievement requires a lot of cooperation from all the stakeholders. Social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability must be carefully handled in order to be effective. Sustainability is a quite broad and wide ranging concept therefore more research has to be done. The stakeholders must also agree on its definition and application for easier implementation. Despite the progress made in sustainability, a standard frame work to assess its progress is still lacking hence more efforts have to be put.
The main driving force for engineers is industrial development. Mechanical engineers therefore play a central role in economic growth. They must get involved more in economic and industrial development of their countries through helping the government in planning for sustainable development. The curriculum for mechanical engineers should be occasionally revised and updated to ensure the innovative minds of the future engineers are well inculcated. Engineers should always be inspired to be creative and innovative every day in order to adequately meet the needs and solve the new emerging challenges in the society. Once the see the fruits of being innovative, it becomes interesting to them hence the engineering enthusiasm raises in them to drive the economy. Engineers must remain creative, innovative and vigilant in order to achieve more in the path sustainable development.
References:
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