Program on Sustainability: A Report by Ernest W. Parti, Ph.D., P.E.
During this year’s ASCE Annual Conference held in Chicago from October 19-21, 2006, on Thursday, October 19th a one-day program was devoted to the issue of sustainability
The issue of sustainability is one several important ‘hot’ topics or issues that have emerged at all levels within political, socio-economic and technical professional communities, along with environmental-energy management and security control of various kinds. In some ways, all of these current issues are intertwined in various complex ways but which are beyond the scope of this report that focuses on the activities related to sustainability which took place in the program in Chicago.
The program track on sustainability was divided into three sessions and was one of four activity tracks offered that day at the conference. The morning first session was a symposium hosted by ASCE’s Technical Committee on Sustainability entitled the “Sustainability in Practice and Education: A Global Perspective” which was moderated by Albert A. Grant, P.E, F.ASCE and past President of the Society. In that session four international perspectives were presented on the general state of current activities devoted to sustainability. The second session was a luncheon talk by Kamel Ayadi, president of the World Federation of Engineering Organization (WFEO). The afternoon and third session was an international roundtable discussion on infrastructure and sustainable development which was organized by ASCE’s International Activities Committee (IAC).
Professor Y.X. Zhong from Beijing China gave the first presentation of morning session. In his presentation Prof. Zhong outlined China’s involvement in the development of a program for the management of the Mekong River Basin known as the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) which is comprised of the countries through which the Mekong River flows including southern China and Indochina. China has played the lead role and promoter of this initiative and for the most part has been advocating a “cautious” top-down information and communication technology (ICT) approach for the management of the river basin. Initially a pilot study is being done in China’s Yunnan Province which when completed will be extended to the other countries signatory to the program which included Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Burma (Myanmar). This careful approach is based on the fact that currently there is insufficient information known about the river basin to be able to make meaningful decisions for physical action until the behavior of the river basin is fully understood so that when any action is taken it will be sustainable in the long run.
The second talk of the morning session given by Ms. Regina Clewlow’s co-founder of Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) was about her experience in efforts at Cornell University to inject the notions and concepts of sustainability into the student curriculum. These efforts tapped into the ground swell of student interest in the issue of sustainability that at the time were not being met by traditional engineering courses. The somewhat unexpectedly high demand and interest expressed by the students in these efforts led to the expansion of the concepts to off-campus activities and the founding of ESW now headed by Ms. Clewlow. What initially started out as a grass roots effort of seminars and lectures oriented around the notion of sustainability was expanded into student internships on various projects in selected countries around the globe.
The third presentation by Richard Wright Ph.D., P.E., Hon. M. ASCE, provided an overview of the background and activities of PERSI (Practice, Education and Research for Sustainable Infrastructure), an initiative of ASCE. PERSI was formally started in the fall of 2004 as an extension of ASCE’s Technical Committee on Sustainability which was established several years prior to that to direct ASCE’s efforts in that emerging area of interest and concern. By the very nature of civil engineering and its ubiquitous role in the development of a nation’s infrastructure PERSI of ASCE is clearly oriented to a total systems approach on sustainability of the infrastructure as it relates to best practices, future education and research efforts. Such an initiative is a natural extension of the civil engineers role as a primary designer and developer of physical facility solutions to environmental issues of society at large.
The fourth and last presentation of the morning session was made by William A. Wallace, the current president of the Engineers Without Borders (EWB). EWB is a interesting parallel to Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres - MSF) which has focussed on providing medical services to the under-served and disaffected people around the world that number somewhere from 1 to 2 billion people of the planet’s more than 6 billion people. EWB engineers rightly noted that the problems of the world’s poor were not limited to only individual and regional disease and malnutrition but included systematic area-wide problems stemming from sub-standard or even non-existent physical facility infrastructure that in and of themselves would promote better health and well being by providing proper sanitation, flood control, and by addressing other natural forces that can best be controlled and managed by engineers applying their collective knowledge and energies to these problems.
The luncheon session of the all-day program revolved around a talk by Kamel Ayadi of Tunisia, the current president of the WFEO. In his talk he basically emphasized the underlying theme of all the speakers in the morning session which was that worldwide engineers had not yet adequately come to grips with a comprehensive approach and action plan regarding sustainability.
The afternoon session used an interesting format to conduct an international roundtable discussion on infrastructure and sustainable development. The session began with a prepared talk on the topic by Ms. Katherine Sierra, VP for Sustainable Development of the World Bank. This prepared talk had been pre-distributed to a relatively large international panel of prominent civil engineering professionals who then in turn gave formal prepared response followed by a brief open session comments from the floor and closing remarks by the roundtable moderators.
In brief Ms. Sierra’s prepared talk posed five questions to the international engineering panelists on the engineers’ role and perspective:
The overriding message of Ms. Sierra’s presentation was that physical facility infrastructure is essential to sustainable development in developing countries. Unfortunately, it was also observed that engineers were increasingly having a less relevant role in setting the infrastructure development program agenda, particularly in the developing world where their talents and skills were likely most needed.
Following Ms. Sierra’s presentation, the roundtable comprised of prominent technical professionals gave their individual responses. The responses were given in alphabetical order by country name as follows:
Each responder addressed each of the five major areas of concern itemized in Ms. Sierra’s paper in some fashion, some being more specific and direct in their comments than others. However all were more or less in agreement with Ms. Sierra’s underlying theme, which is that the engineering profession in general does not possess the level of influence on the infrastructure development program within their respective countries that would be commensurate with their relative expertise in such matters.
Finally for those seeking some additional background material on the topic of sustainability one is referred to a relatively recent Fall 2005 issue of the Means, Methods and Trends magazine (http://www.mmtmagazine.org/archives/fall05.html) which included several articles on the theme of sustainability. In particular the reader may find interesting both the interview formatted article entitled “Sustainability: A Crises in Leadership” by Lonnie Coplen and Porie Saikia-Eapen and the overview oriented article entitled “Practice, Education and Research for Sustainable Infrastructure (PERSI) by Richard Wright.
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