We spoke with Vaishnavi Balachandran, a talented young design engineer in Stantec’s water business. Here are her thoughts on the responsibility placed upon the next generation of engineers to ensure a brighter future for the planet and our society.
It’s an overwhelming statement: global human-made mass exceeds the overall mass of all living biomass on Earth: our buildings and infrastructure outweigh all the world’s trees and shrubs, and our plastic outweighs the dry weight of all animals. The Anthropocene has been driven mostly by our production of concrete, metal, plastic, bricks, and asphalt.
We have engineered a world with more conveniences than ever before and changed the planet more rapidly in the last 50-100 years than at any previous point in history. But is this sustainable and can we let it continue? As engineers, what’s our role in the future production and accumulation of human-made mass?
A commitment to a global responsibility
To achieve environmental and social justice, us engineers must commit to a global responsibility. In the UK, we make a commitment to ethical principles through our Professional Engineering Institution’s code of conduct and the Engineering Council’s Statement of Ethical Principles: honesty and integrity; respect for life, law, the environment and public good; accuracy and rigour; and leadership and communication.
Organisations such as Engineers Without Borders (EWB) has created a movement to unite the engineering community, with four principles:
- Responsible: meet the needs of all people within the limits of our planet, to be at the heart of engineering
- Purposeful: consider all the impacts of engineering, from a project or product’s inception to the end of its life, on global and local scales
- Inclusive: ensure that diverse viewpoints and knowledge are included and respected in the engineering process
- Regenerative: actively restore and regenerate ecological systems, rather than just reducing impact
Too often, engineers are seen as the problem-solvers brought in later to build something new to fix a problem. We need to go back and focus on the problems.
Inspire the next generation
A lifelong commitment to globally responsible engineering starts at school and university, and throughout an engineering career. From what an “engineer” looks like to how STEM is used in the real world; STEM Ambassador programmes are key to inspire younger generations (and hopefully our next workforce!).
Engineering is all around us
It’s not necessarily the most common dinner table topic, but we should engage with networks, family, and friends about engineering, because engineering affects us all. Engineers create our daily choices, many of which are unconscious.
In the UK water sector, we ensure safe and reliable water and sewerage services, to the extent that we assume it will always be there. As a result, we lose our connection with the precious value of water in our ecological systems.
As a STEM Ambassador and WaterAid Speaker, I engage with communities about the value of water and the natural environment—from what the public is willing to pay for, school assemblies, and global access to water, sanitation and hygiene.
Upskill ourselves
We’ve put in the work, site experience, but we shouldn’t rest on what we know. Another responsibility is to provide the engineering community with the skills, knowledge, and expertise to incorporate these principles into their day-to-day practice.
The hierarchies used in H&S, carbon, and waste management is a starting point; Avoid, Reduce, Reuse, Substitute, Restore, Offset. Eliminating, avoiding or preventing has the greatest impact, but we need skills and knowledge to identify and challenge how to achieve this. We can do more, when we’re aware of the wider consequences to the environment and society.
Collaborate and challenge
For globally responsible engineering to become the norm, we need to collaborate with organisations, partners, and the public. Engineers have a critical role to play in shaping what the future looks like. With climate change and biodiversity awareness at a record-high, there is hope that we will re-focus on balancing the current and future needs of people and our planet.
What’s the call to action? We need the confidence to challenge the status quo. Our normal way of engineering is not sustainable in the future, we cannot afford the impacts and perils of inaction. As a member of the global engineering community, I am fortunate to work with WaterAid and EWB. But as enablers of more carbon, and carbon-intensive practices, we need the skills, knowledge, collective support, and commitment to change how we build the world.
