Engineering Civilisation from the Shadows...Climate change Engineering the world away from the...

Professor Paul W Jowitt of Heriot-Watt UniversityICE Vice President

EngineeringCivilisationfrom theShadows6th Brunel International Lecture

COL1084 Brunel Report AW 14/6/06 12:41

Contents

Introduction 01Climate change is real 03Poverty is real 05Visions of the future – seeing the big picture 06

BrunelBrundtlandBazalgette

Engineering, technology and economics 08Energy and climate change 10Changing behaviour 12Changing the technology 13Changing the fuel 15The engineer’s role in delivering theUN Millennium Development Goals 16Prerequisites for development 17Engineering without Frontiers 18An engineering vision for MDG implementation 19Policy development, advocacy and influence 23Key messages to G8 leaders and the media 25The next steps 26Postscript: paying the price? 26Acknowledgments 28About the Author 29Endnotes 30

ARotterdam.Credit: Paul Jowitt

BDowntown Calgary.Credit: Paul Jowitt

CDelhi.Credit: Paul Jowitt

DKibera.Credit: Paul Jowitt

AThe long marchto makingpoverty history.Credit:Paul Jowitt

BBirhan Wolduat Live 8.Credit:Comic Relief

CThree GorgesDam, China.Credit:DigitalGlobe

DCredit: ABBAccess toElectricity,March 2006

AHurricane Katrina.Credit: NOAA

BFactory at sunset.Credit:Carbon Trust

CThe congestioncharge in London– tacklingcongestionon the roads.Credit:© Transport forLondon 2005

DImpact of theTsunami in SriLanka.Credit:GordonMasterton

Front cover

Top row from left Bottom row from left

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The Brunel International LectureThe Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE)established the Brunel InternationalLecture in 1999 in memory of IsambardKingdom Brunel.

The Brunel International Lectures have covered topics ranging fromInfrastructure, Technology for theThird Millennium, SustainableDevelopment, Poverty Alleviation, and Water for the World.

The 2006 Brunel International Lecture –Engineering Civilisation from the Shadows– draws on elements of all of them. Itsfocus is on the role of engineering inaddressing the twin spectres facing theworld in the 21st century: climate changeand world poverty:

Poverty

Engineering the poor out of the darkshadows cast by world poverty and themisery it generates.

Climate change

Engineering the world away from theequally long shadows thrown by anenergy and environmental crisis andwith global climate at a tipping point.

The resolutions for these two issuesare not unrelated. It was no coincidencethey were the central issues at the G8summit in Gleneagles in July 2005.

The 2006 Brunel International Lecture islaunched in London on 6 June 2006, justover 200 years after Brunel was bornon 9 April 1806. Over the succeeding12 months it will be taken around theworld to various venues. In particular:

■ Where the Institution has members■ Where the content of the lecture is

of local relevance■ Where the Institution seeks to

influence change

Continual feedback, comment and inputwill be sought from people around theworld. In that sense, it is a living lecture andwill be adapted in the process of delivery.This version is just “work in progress”.

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EngineeringCivilisationfrom theShadowsProfessor Paul W Jowitt of Heriot-Watt UniversityICE Vice President

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AGround floor ofhouse in Banda Acehdevastated byTsunami.Credit: Amar Bhogal

BVast areas of BandaAceh razed to theground by Tsunami.Credit: Amar Bhogal

CImpact of theTsunami in Sri Lanka.Credit:Gordon Masterton


03

Climate change is real

It is now almost universally acceptedthat global climate change is a reality,and that the activities of the humanrace – principally through the releaseof greenhouse gases – are acontributory factor over which wedo have some control and which wenow need to exercise beneficially.

However unpredictable in terms oftheir precise spatial and temporal effects,the consequences of climate change –sea level rise, depletion of freshwaterwater resources, changes in the patternsof rainfall, drought and flooding – willhave the greatest impact on the mostimpoverished people of the world. Andthose least susceptible to the effects willbe those most responsible for the bulkof the causative emissions.

In June 2005, National ScienceAcademies of 11 countries – Brazil,Canada, China, France, Germany, India,Italy, Japan, Russia, USA and the UK issueda Joint Statement1: ‘Global Response toClimate Change’. Its opening line was:“Climate change is real.” It went on to say:

“…human activities are now causingatmospheric concentrations ofgreenhouse gases to rise well abovepre-industrial levels. Carbon dioxidelevels have increased from 280 parts permillion (ppm) in 1750 to over 375 ppmtoday – higher than any previous levelsin the last 420,000 years.”

“…even if greenhouse gas emissions werestabilised instantly at today’s levels, theclimate would still continue to changeas it adapts to the increased emissionof recent decades. Further changesin climate are therefore unavoidable.Nations must prepare for them.”

“Developing nations that lack theinfrastructure or resources to respondto the impacts of climate change will beparticularly affected. It is clear that manyof the world’s poorest people are likelyto suffer the most from climate change.”

“The task of devising and implementingstrategies to adapt to the consequencesof climate change will require worldwidecollaborative inputs from a wide range of experts, including physical and natural scientists, engineers, socialscientists, medical scientists, thosein the humanities, business leaders and economists.”

The Statement then called on the G8Leaders – who were about to assemblefor their summit at Gleneagles in 2005 –to acknowledge the clear and increasingthreat of climate change and to identifycost-effective steps that can be taken now,to contribute to substantial and long-termreductions in net global greenhouse gasemissions. They also called for themobilisation of the engineering, scienceand technology community, to developand deploy clean energy technologiesand approaches to energy efficiency, andthe sharing of this knowledge with thedeveloping nations, to enable them todevelop innovative solutions to mitigate

and adapt to the adverse effects of climatechange, while explicitly recognising theirlegitimate development rights.

The Earth’s surface has warmed byapproximately 0.6°C during the 20thcentury. The Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (IPCC) has projectedthat over the next century average globalsurface temperatures will rise furtherby between 1.4°C and 5.8°C. The IPCCestimates that the combined effects ofice melting and sea water expansion fromocean warming are projected to cause theglobal mean sea-level to rise by between0.1 and 0.9 metres by 2100.

In Bangladesh alone, a 0.5 metre sea-level rise would place about six millionpeople at risk from flooding. The IPPC’s2001 report2 also predicted:

■ Increased storminess and droughtwith major impacts on agriculturalproduction in many parts of thedeveloping world

■ A range of impacts on human health,aggravated in many parts of the worldby problems of water supply, andhunger and malnutrition

■ Massive increases in species extinction rates

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“The task of devising and implementing strategies toadapt to the consequences of climate change willrequire worldwide collaborative inputs from a widerange of experts, including physical and naturalscientists, engineers, social scientists, medicalscientists, those in the humanities, business leadersand economists.”


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A recent paper by Patz et al3 reports thatthe World Health Organization (WHO) hasestimated that climate change caused byindustrial emissions already accounts for atleast five million cases of illness and morethan 150,000 deaths per year throughillnesses such as diarrhoea, malaria,bacterial contamination of food andmalnutrition. This offers further evidencethat the issues of global climate changeand world poverty are stronglyinterrelated.

The effects of climate change are notconfined to slowly changing and spatiallywidespread phenomena, but are alsomanifest in the increased occurrence ofshort-term episodes of extreme behaviourssuch as hurricanes and typhoons. Thereis support for the view that HurricaneKatrina, which devastated New Orleansin late August 2005, was such an event– its power intensified by increased seatemperatures in the Caribbean Ocean.In August 1992 Hurricane Andrew4

proved to be a near miss for downtownMiami, Miami Beach, Key Biscayne, FortLauderdale and New Orleans in particular,but not for some. It resulted in severedamage to the northwestern Bahamas,the southern Florida peninsula and south-central Louisiana. US damage aloneamounted to $25 billion, making Andrew

the most expensive natural disaster inUS history at that time. With HurricaneKatrina in 2005, New Orleans was notso fortunate. The economic damagesof Katrina dwarfed those of Andrew –at least $125 billion. The socialconsequences are even more dramatic –and not countable in dollars…

But perhaps the major lesson to belearned from Katrina and the destructionof New Orleans was how the criticalinfrastructure of such a major cityin the world’s richest and technicallymost advanced nation could so easilybe reduced to chaos, and with it thesocial cohesion of its population.

And with urbanisation increasingapace globally (by 2025, the world’spopulation will have increased by about1.5 billion to a total of approximately6.6 billion, and the percentage of thoseliving in urban environments will haveincreased from 40% to 60%5) thegreatest risks to humanity will be in thelesser developed countries, and where thecriticality of urban infrastructure – whereit exists – is even more fragile. And whereit doesn’t, the consequences are evenmore awful to contemplate.

AKibera.Credit: Paul Jowitt

BMbdoni in Kenya.Credit: Paul Jowitt

CHanna-Nassif in Dares Salaam, Tanzania.Credit: Paul Jowitt

D“To judge the healthof a nation, countthe taps not thehospital beds.”Credit: WaterAid

BA

“We are the first generation that can look extreme poverty in the eye, and say this and mean it – we have the cash, we have the drugs, we have the science. Do we have thewill to make poverty history?” Bono


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Poverty is real

Even without the effects ofhurricanes, floods, earthquakes andlandslides, the immediate prospectsfor both the urban and rural poor inmany parts of the world is bleak, withlittle or no access to even the mostbasic of infrastructure, education, and healthcare, and with little, orat best tenuous, legal tenure toland or property.

Six of the eight UN MillenniumDevelopment Goals6 (MDGs) are directlyconcerned with the human condition –people’s physical health, their economicand social well-being and their capacity to play a full and useful role in the world.Two of them relate to the condition we are in and how we deal with it.

In one way or another, all of the UNMDGs depend critically on the delivery –and the processes of delivery – of theunderpinning infrastructure upon whichcivilisation depends. And not justinfrastructure, but infrastructure thatdelivers real, pro-poor outcomes in theprocess of its planning, construction andoperation.

UN Millennium Development Goals:

1 Eradicate extreme povertyand hunger

2 Achieve universal primaryeducation

3 Promote gender equality andempower women

4 Reduce child mortality 5 Improve maternal health 6 Combat HIV and AIDS, malaria

and other diseases 7 Ensure environmental

sustainability 8 Develop a global partnership

for development

And so, just as addressing climate changewill involve engineers, so too will addressingthe UN MDGs. This was underlined at abreakfast meeting held in 11 DowningStreet on 30 November 2005. The criticalrole of underpinning infrastructure fordevelopment was stated at the outsetby Calestous Juma7 (Chair of the UnitedNations Science, Technology andInnovation Task Force):

“At least three key factors contributedto the rapid economic transformationof emerging economies. First, theyinvested heavily in basic infrastructure,which served as a foundation fortechnological learning. Second, theynurtured the development of smalland medium-sized enterprises, whichrequired the development of localoperational, repair and maintenanceexpertise. Third, their governmentssupported, funded and nurtured highereducation institutions, academiesof engineering and technologicalsciences, professional engineeringand technological associations, andindustrial and trade associations.”

It was reinforced at the same meetingby the UK Government’s Chief ScientificAdvisor, Sir David King:

“The key to sustainable development inAfrica – that is, development that doesnot rely indefinitely on foreign aid – is thecreation of infrastructure. Part of this is apurely physical matter: a question of civilengineering. The business and financecommunities in African nations identifythe lack of good roads, railways, air andwater transport facilities, energy andwater supplies, and telecommunicationsnetworks as one of the main obstacles toeconomic growth.”

Of all the UN MDG targets, perhaps those that could have the most impact are those relating to safe water suppliesand waste water disposal. Never has there been a truer statement than thatwhich first appeared on a WaterAidposter over 20 years ago: “To judge thehealth of a nation, count the taps not the hospital beds.”

Two billion people worldwide arecurrently without access to an adequatewater supply. The UN’s target is to halvethat number by 2015. And that in the faceof a world population that is becomingmore and more urbanised. Providing safewater for one billion people by 2015means connecting more than a quarterof a million people per day, every day,for the next 10 years. Can it be done?And if so how?

In another pre-G8 call, and from a verydifferent quarter, Bono, the lead singer ofU2, laid down the challenge:

“We are the first generation that can lookextreme poverty in the eye, and say thisand mean it – we have the cash, we havethe drugs, we have the science. Do wehave the will to make poverty history?”(Bono)8

This section of the paper has set the scene,laid out some of the evidence, and throwsdown the challenge of EngineeringCivilisation out of the Shadows.

The emphasis must be on the deliveryof successful outcomes.

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AIsambardKingdom Brunel.Credit: ICE

BGro HarlemBrundtland.Credit: UN

CJoseph Bazalgette.Credit: ICE

Visions of the future – seeing the big picture

So it is clear that there are two globalissues that affect us all and in which weare all players. There will be no spectatorsas the future unfolds. But there areparticular implications for civil engineersand the Institution of Civil Engineers. And not for the first time.

Brunel

To many engineers – and to many non-engineers too – IsambardKingdom Brunel was one of the 19thcentury’s great heroes. Not just anengineering hero. A man of shortphysical stature but a giant among his peers. The obvious questions arise:How would Brunel respond to thechallenges of the 21st century? Wouldhe have been an engineer at all? If hehad, would he be motivated by thefascination of machines or by theneeds of people? Would he have seen how to use the former to deal with the latter? Just howwould he have dealt with the colossal issues of today?

Brunel’s engineering educationand training was a combination of thetheoretical and practical, of subjects broadand deep, technical and non-technical.When the young Brunel was eight yearsold, his father, the engineer Marc IsambardBrunel, sent him to a school at Hoveon the south coast of England. Here heamused himself by making model boatsand surveying and sketching the localbuildings9. This ‘drawing habit’ (sketching)was something he picked up from hisfather, who had always insisted that itwas as important to the engineer asknowledge of the alphabet. It undoubtedlyhelped to develop Brunel’s extraordinarilyacute powers of observation andvisualisation.

His early education ranged from Euclid’sgeometry to the Latin poetry of Virgil andHorace. As a 14 year old, Isambard wassent to Caen in France, so that he mighthave an advanced mathematical education,in preparation for taking the entranceexamination to the Ecole Polytechnique.

His introduction to engineeringpractice and project management wasrapid. As a young engineer, aged barely20, he took on heavy responsibilitiesalmost from the start, in the face of greatpersonal and project risks. Few engineerscan have paralleled Brunel’s induction tocivil engineering – as resident engineerfor the Thames Tunnel.

Throughout his life, he was aman of tremendous vision, persuasionand innovation. Always driven, oftenstubborn, sometimes vainglorious,perhaps occasionally almost recklesswith his investors’ money, and it has tobe acknowledged, also with the livesof some of his workforce, but alwaysat the forefront. He got things done,sometimes at whatever the cost.

Brunel’s engineering was essentiallyall about that part of the Tredgold10

definition of civil engineering to dowith trade, commerce and opening upmarkets, and in particular, getting rawmaterials to the centres of production andfinished goods to market – quickly andcheaply. We see it today still in perhapshis greatest legacy – the Great WesternRailway. We see Brunel the man in thatmost famous photograph, wearing hisstovepipe hat and with his trademark

cigar, standing in front of the launchchains of the largest boat then set to sailthe oceans – the Great Eastern. Ironically,simultaneously his greatest success andfailure, and which probably contributed tohis early death at the age of 53. But whatwould he have made of today?

Brundtland

In a dictionary of biography, the nameof Brundtland would be found prettyclose to Brunel.

Gro Harlem Brundtland11 chairedthe World Commission on Environmentand Development, which led to thepublication of what has become knownas the ‘Brundtland Report’12 in 1987,and which in turn led to the first EarthSummit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro.

The Brundtland Report also led to thelandmark concept of what is now knownas sustainable development:

“Development that meets the needs ofthe present without compromising theability of future generations to meettheir own needs.”

In many ways, and certainly in theprevailing paradigm of the 19th century,Brunel and his contemporaries weredelivering sustainable infrastructure.Brunel was adept at persuading his projectsponsors of the infrastructure legacy theywere funding, even if he was less clearabout the eventual outturn costs.

“Development that meets the needs ofthe present without compromising theability of future generations to meettheir own needs.”


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Perhaps if he had been, some of his lastingachievements might never have seen thelight of day. Major construction projectsare frequently under-costed, but oncestarted, are notoriously difficult to stop.And it is no less true today13,14. Witnessthe Scottish Parliament Building, theChannel Tunnel (at the third attempt),the new Wembley Stadium, and theMillennium Dome. Other spectacularexamples of cost underestimation werethe Sydney Opera House (actual costsapproximately 15 times higher thanprojected), the supersonic Concordeaeroplane (costs 12 times higher thanpredicted), the Suez Canal (completedin 1869 with actual costs 20 times higherthan the earliest estimated costs and threetimes higher than the cost estimate forthe year before construction began).

But what is crucial is the ability andvision to identify those projects of strategicconsequence – and to recognise thosethat aren’t. Even Brunel had to deal withthe latter – perhaps most notably with hisatmospheric railway15.

Bazalgette

But what about that other 19thcentury engineering hero, JosephBazalgette? Again, not too far awayfrom Brunel and Brundtland in thebiographical dictionary of the greatand the good. Both men had Frenchbackgrounds16.

But Bazalgette was a charactervery different to Brunel. Bazalgette’scontributions were often much moreto do with a less explicit part of theTredgold definition – public works and theunderpinning infrastructure for civilisationitself, rather than directly supporting themeans of production and commerce. And, in contrast to Brunel, Bazalgette’sworks were funded mainly by the publicpurse rather than by private financiers and entrepreneurs.

Bazalgette’s defining issue (sic) wasdealing with the problem of urban sewageand its disposal into local water coursesand the resultant occurrence of waterrelated diseases such as cholera and theirimpact on public health. It was a storyof overcrowded and congested cities,poverty, slums, disease and a highincidence of child mortality. Socialreformers, campaigners and celebritieswere calling for action.

No, this wasn’t about Africa in 2005. It wasn’t Bono and Bob Geldof and Live 8.Their time was yet to come. No, this wasLondon and other UK cities 150 yearsago. The social reform campaigners werepeople like the northern lawyer Sir EdwinChadwick, Benjamin Disraeli and CharlesDickens’ brother Alfred. But there aresome parallel and powerful messageshere for civil engineers – and others –at the start of the 21st century.

Legislation enacted in the early 1800shad led to a reduction in the number ofcesspits and an increase in the use ofwater closets and the number of sewerstaking domestic sewage to outfalls in theThames where they discharged at lowtide. Incoming tides carried the sewageupstream to Teddington Lock and it to’edand fro’ed up and down the river for days.Combinations of high tides and heavy raincaused the sewers to back up and floodthe houses they were supposed to drain.The cause of the cholera epidemics thatresulted was at first misunderstood.Some, including Chadwick, believedin the miasmic (‘bad air’) theory17,18 .

In 1854 the cause of cholera wasfirmly established by Dr John Snow’sdemonstration that an outbreak in Sohowas due to contamination by sewage ofthe water supply taken from the BroadStreet pump. His advice was simple: “Take away the pump handle.”

Meanwhile, Joseph Bazalgette hadbeen appointed assistant surveyor tothe 2nd Commission of Sewers in 1849,becoming engineer in 1852, and then

Chief Engineer to the Metropolitan Boardof Works.

The crunch finally came in 1858 withwhat was known as the ‘Great Stink’,when the stench from the Stygian Thameswas so bad that the windows of parliamentwere draped in curtains soaked in chlorideof lime, and there was talk of moving theLaw Courts to Oxford. Paddle steamers on the Thames – appropriately describedas the ‘aqua mortis’ – had to stop workingas their paddles churned up the sewageladen waters.

And then something happened…the Government of the day willed themeans and established the institutionsto deliver the ends.

Specifically, the Metropolis LocalManagement Amendment Act (2 August1858) empowered the MetropolitanBoard of Works to borrow £3 million,guaranteed by the UK Treasury, to berepaid by the proceeds of a three pennyrate over 40 years19.

Joseph Bazalgette’s response was toconstruct a system of major interceptingsewers to take wastewater for treatmentand safe disposal in the downstreamreaches of the Thames, far away fromthe centres of population. He presentedhis design calculations to the Institutionof Civil Engineers in 1865. Bazalgette’sscheme cost £4.5 million and comprised1,300 miles of brick built sewers, pumpingstations and numerous other engineeringappurtenances.

With new sources of supply takenfrom upstream to the west and north ofLondon, and with borehole supplies in thesouth, the cycle of water-borne diseasewould be broken. The old London riversrunning into the Thames would no longerbe the major elements of the supply/disposal system. In consequence, theThames would cease to be a major causeof disease and nuisance.

When he died in 1891, his obituaryin The Times20 paid a fulsome tribute toa 19th century engineering hero of whom


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the masses were barely aware, but whohad played an unseen hand in extendingtheir life expectancy:

“Joseph Bazalgette: That great, far-sighted engineer, who probably didmore good, and saved more lives, thanany single Victorian public official…Of the great sewer that runs beneath,Londoners know, as a rule, nothing,though the Registrar-General couldtell them that its existence has addedtwenty years to their chance of life.”

Engineering, technology and economics

What were the technical andeconomic conditions in which Bruneland Bazalgette operated and howdo they relate to those of today?

Engineering science – supplantingempiricism with rational explanations ofphysical behaviour at a range of spatialand temporal scales – was a product ofthe Age of Enlightenment, whose definingcharacteristics have been interpreted asfollows21:

■ A self proclaimed movement; inspiredby rationalism, underpinned by thenew ‘philosophy of science’

■ Determined to challenge orthodoxy inall its forms (not just the orthodoxy ofexisting ideas but also of institutions)

■ Characterised above all by anoptimism and faith in human progress,that sought that we should live inaccordance with human reason,with the consequence that theimportance of human rights (orat least ‘the natural rights of thecitizen’) came high on the agenda

In their different ways, both Brunel andBazalgette capitalised on the emergenceof this rational phase of technology, andwith it the means of mass production andcomponent interchangeability, to buildsustainable, enduring infrastructure.Increased efficiency and levels ofproduction were achieved bymechanisation, powered by machinesfed by fossil fuels – and whose widereffects were yet to be realised…

It appeared that anything seemedpossible. In some ways it was. The civilengineer could repeat Thomas Tredgold’swords with confidence: “Civil engineeringis the art of directing the great sources ofpower in nature for the use andconvenience of man.”

It was against this background andin a prevailing atmosphere of economicopportunity and social responsibility thatBrunel, Bazalgette and others operatedand thrived, laying the foundations for a civilised society, and which it is now our responsibility to recreate and carryforward into the 21st century.

From the crucible of that 19th centurytechnological and economic powerhousecame much of the world as we see ittoday, with successive waves of technicalinnovation and periods of rapid socialchange. From it sprang the transportationsystems of canals, highways, railwaysand ports; the power systems; the watersupply, sewerage and irrigation systems;the production and consumption ofconsumer goods on a massive scale inan increasingly urbanised society; and thedevelopment of large-scale constructionand the changing form of cities and towns.

But from it also sprang the problemsof congestion, air pollution, damage tothe environment, profligate resource use,global warming, over-abstraction ofwatercourses, water pollution, urbanblight and social injustice.

In the era of technical rationality –which has dominated the past two orthree centuries – economic and technical

progress was generally embedded innarrow technical disciplines which,despite our scientific understanding,did not anticipate the wider physicaland non-physical consequences at thesystems level22.

The emergent properties andbehaviours of large and complex systemswere neither fully appreciated nor fullyunderstood. It was not anticipated thatman’s activities would lead to impacts ona global scale, which now threaten theenvironment and man’s place in it. No-oneforesaw that Henry Ford’s production lineof Black Model Ts would lead inexorably tochanges in urban form, large-scale urbancongestion, air pollution (and its linkage to the higher incidence of child asthma),CO2 emissions or global warming andclimate change. The development oflarge-scale irrigation and hydropowerschemes didn’t anticipate the loss ofbiodiversity, ecosystem damage, soilerosion and loss of soil fertility. There wasan overriding economic imperative, andthe false assumption that the fruits of theplanet were a free good.

It is now becoming clear that the earthis no longer a homeostat, no longer ableto withstand and rebound from humanactivity. It has limits. The effects are locked in.

Such realisations mark the end of theera of technical rationality and signal thebeginning of a more holistic (systems)view of the world. Increasingly, theresponse has been the emergence,widespread acceptance and, increasingly,the adoption of the principles ofsustainable development in order todirect the economy for social benefitwithin the confines and capacity of theenvironment, now and into the future.

There is still some way to go inchanging individual, corporate andnational behaviours, but there is nodoubt that we are now entering thesystems/holistic phase, and with it theneed to develop systems level solutions.

ASchumpeter’saccelerating wavesof technologicalinnovation.Adapted fromJoseph Schumpeter


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Water power

Textiles

Iron

FIFTH WAVEFOURTH WAVETHIRD WAVESECOND WAVEFIRST WAVE

1785

PACE

OF

INN

OV

ATI

ON

Electricity

Chemicals

Internal-combustion engine

1900

Steam

Rail

Steel

1845

Petrochemicals

Electronics

Aviation

1950

Digital networks

Software

New media

19901999 2020

30 years40 years50 years55 years60 years

A

In his ICE Presidential Address inNovember 2005, Gordon Mastertonreflected on the challenge of ‘Sustainingour Future’:

“In its broadest sense we, as engineers,need to view the ‘big picture’ in all wedo. Brunel addressed the big issues ofhis time – the growth of trade, andtransportation’s crucial role in this.If Brunel were alive now, his globalvision and genius would be appliedto the planet-sized problems of today.Solving these problems will requirecivil engineers working in partnership,crossing disciplines. We need to use ourengineering know-how to help influenceand educate decision-makers – includingthe public stakeholders – to take a globalview of sustainability issues.”

Society has evolved throughvarious phases of social, economicand technological change. Episodes oftechnological innovation were followedby their economic exploitation in a seriesof waves23 that has taken in the emergenceof water power/canals/iron/textiles in thelate 18th century; steam power/railways/steel in the mid 19th century; and theemergence of electricity/chemicals/theinternal combustion engine in the early20th century. The mid 20th century wascharacterised by petrochemicals/electronicsand aviation. At the start of the 21stcentury we are in the IT era of digitalnetworks, software and new media, butthere is a growing sense that progress isn’tthe sole province of technology.

It is becoming increasingly clearthat tomorrow’s underpinning driversare more about environmental issuesand social objectives, rather than simplytechnological and economic development.And that interface between human/socialdemands and the application oftechnology is – as it always has been– the domain of the civil engineer.

But the critical infrastructure thatbenefited the UK, as the foremost engineof the industrial revolution in the 19thand early 20th centuries we now knowdid not always serve others so well. Forexample, the initial transport networksin places such as Africa were focusedon shifting raw materials to the portsfor export rather than to stimulate localindustrial development and capacity24.And even today, transport costs incountries such as Uganda add theequivalent of an 80% tax to its clothingexports25.

At the beginning of the 21st centuryaccess to the most basic of infrastructure isstill seemingly beyond the reach of millionsin the developing world and without it theachievement of the UN MillenniumDevelopment Goals will remain a dream.

It is time that dream was turned into a reality.

In his introduction to the BrandtReport26 over 20 years ago, Willy Brandtwrote:

“What limits our response to thechallenges of the present crisis? It is notprimarily the lack of technical solutions,which are already largely familiar, but the

lack of a clear and broadly reflectedawareness of the current realities anddangers, and an absence of the politicalwill necessary to meet the real problems.Only a new spirit of solidarity, based ona respect for the individual, the nationalheritage and the common good, canmake possible the achievement of thesolutions so desperately needed.”

and later in the report with regard toenergy…

“Promoting energy research in the thirdworld: …to assist developing countriesin negotiating energy contracts andassuring energy supplies; to assist themin the more appropriate use of traditionalenergy sources, particularly fuel wood,which is now being used at anunsustainable rate with profoundlydamaging effects on the environmentand agriculture of the world; to examinethe feasibility of alternative traditionalenergy sources, particularly cost effectiveand low technology means of generatingenergy; to promote sub-regional andregional co-operation in reducing energycosts and enduring energy supplies fordeveloping countries.”

“Joseph Bazalgette: That great, far-sighted engineer, who probably didmore good, and saved more lives, thanany single Victorian public official…Of the great sewer that runs beneath,Londoners know, as a rule, nothing,though the Registrar-General could tellthem that its existence has addedtwenty years to their chance of life.”


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AEnergy efficiencylearning curves.Adapted fromBenjamin Dessus

BContraction andconvergence.Adapted from GlobalCommons Institute

It’s about time we delivered.

What limits our response?

The Age of Enlightenment also spawnedthe other great idea of the time – thegrowth of economic theory and the natureof capitalism, and the works of peoplesuch as Adam Smith (1723-1790),Jeremy Bentham (1747-1832), DavidRicardo (1772-1823), John Stuart Mill(1806-73), and Karl Marx (1818-1883).

Economics27 is essentially rooted inthe concept that the human tendency isto maximise economic efficiency – ie ‘theoptimal allocation of resources’. It saysnothing about whether this optimalityresults in an equitable, a better, a moreeffective or a more desirable state ofaffairs. And neither can the ‘laws’ ofeconomics transcend the laws ofthermodynamics and principles of socialjustice – perpetual growth in world GDPhas its price. And the planet and someof its peoples are paying it.

In a pre-echo of Brundtland andBrandt, it was Bentham28 who coinedthe imperative “the greatest good forthe greatest number” – and with it thedilemma of satisfying two competingobjectives simultaneously.

Occam’s razor29 suggests using thesimplest models available to understandthe world. Engineers and economists alikehave tended to do so wherever possible.In engineering, there is always a tendencyto see if a linear model between causeand effect will adequately model reality.It often does, as with the use of Hooke’sLaw to relate stress and strain. Perhaps foreconomists the equivalent is the DiscountRate, and with it the notion of net presentvalue, to represent the time value ofmoney and reflect the sense of future risksand present-day alternative investmentopportunities.

But net present value calculations donot necessarily lead to acceptable decisionoutcomes for those problems of global

proportions. As the economist Heal30

has observed:

“If one discounts present world GrossNational Product over 200 years at 5%, it is worth only a few hundred thousanddollars, the price of a good apartment.Discounted at 10%, it is equivalent to aused car. On the basis of such valuations,it is irrational to be concerned aboutglobal warming, nuclear waste,species extinction and other long runphenomena. Yet societies are worriedabout these issues, and are activelyconsidering devoting very substantialresources to them.”

And if we are looking at issues such asclimate change, then we also need realisticphysical models of the world that reflectits potential for non-linear behaviour as aresult of the accumulation of apparentlyrelatively small changes in externalpressures.

In terms of climate change, it is easy to forget the simple heat experiments ofschool physics and the limitations of linearmodels. In both a metaphorical andphysical sense we are standing on an icesheet, expecting it to absorb the heat ofour activities. But it can only absorb somuch for so long. Then it melts. Phasereversal requires an equivalent amountof heat to be taken out of the system.The processes are not instantaneous.The world has inertia, but once mobilised,also momentum – and with it – direction.

The potential of the Atlantic HeatConveyor31 to ‘switch’ and the GulfStream to collapse, is perhaps one of themost threatening examples of large-scalenon-linear behaviour. Recent research32

suggests that melting freshwater from theArctic ice sheets could dilute the denserGulf Stream waters, preventing themfrom sinking and returning to the tropics. Some estimates make the chances of thishappening as high as 45% within the next100 years – if mean global temperatures

rise by just 2-3ºC (which they are currentlyset to do). The odds are shortening. The consequences in northern latitudeswill be to widen the energy gap to copewith freezing winter conditions and coolersummers, and could lead to tens ofthousands of additional, annual cold-related deaths and a dramatic change inecosystems as the northern hemispherebecomes cooler and drier. In the equatorialregions, the consequences will be droughtand famine.

Energy and climate change

It is therefore time to turn ourattention back to energy – andimplicitly energy resources.

Although we derive energy from avariety of sources, the world is currentlypowered by a predominantly fossil-fuelled, carbon-based energy system ofcoal, oil and gas. All of them are non-renewable and out of balance within thetimescales of the human race. We nowknow their wider environmental effects. It is useful to remember that the StoneAge ended long before the world ran out of stones. And one way or the other,the oil age will end before the world runsout of oil.

The patterns of worldwide energy use are disproportionate, and with themthe sources of CO2 emissions. But thepatterns are changing with the emergenceof economies such as China and India.China is the world’s largest user of coaland it is now the second largest consumerof oil and gas33, though still a relativelysmall consumer on a per capita basis. Butthis is changing rapidly with the growth ofChina as a car-owning, consumer society.Energy use in China has increased by660% since 1965, compared to 76% inthe USA over the same period. By 2020,China’s energy use is predicted todouble34. The emerging economies arestill on the technological energy efficiency


11

Rest of world

This example shows rates of C&C negotiated as regions.This example is for a 450ppmv contraction budget, converging by 2030.

IndiaChinaFSU

OECD less USAUSA

ChinaRest of world

India

USA

OECD less USAFSU

Tonnes Carbon Per Capita

Gigatonnes carbon gross

1800

8GT

6

3

0

4GT

1900 2000 2030 2100 2200

Britain

United States

France

Japan

1840

1.2

1.0

0.8

0.6

Oil

equi

vale

nt in

ton

nes

for

$10,

000

of G

DP

0.4

0.2

01880 1920 1960 2000 2040

China

Energy changes

Likely future fordeveloping countries

A B

learning curve35, as measured by thevariation through time of the ratio ofenergy use per unit of GDP. Typically, as aneconomy develops, energy dependencygrows very quickly with investment inbasic infrastructure, heavy industry,transport networks, and urbanisation.Energy use per unit of GDP then falls off asthe economy matures. History also showsthat newly industrialised countries aresuccessively less energy-dependent duringtheir primary growth period as they learntechnologically from their predecessors.This will temper – but only to a limitedextent – the impacts of newly emergingeconomies.

But atmospheric CO2 levels arereaching critical levels and there must be a strategy to stabilise concentrations to a (relatively) safe level, and with the Kyotoprocess in limbo, some other process orprotocol will be required to arrest theasymmetric pattern of ‘Expansion andDivergence’ and which leads to a moreequitable and less self-destructive useof the earth’s resources36.

The ‘Contraction and Convergence(C&C) Strategy’ proposed by the GlobalCommons Institute37, 38, offers such a

process, drawing widespread interestand support, for example from theIndian Government39, the Africa Groupof Nations40 and the USA41. In December1997 at the United Nations FrameworkConvention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)in Kyoto – and shortly before theywithdrew from the Kyoto negotiations– the USA stated:

“Contraction and convergence containselements for the next agreement that we may ultimately all seek to engage in.”The US Delegation to UN FrameworkConvention on Climate Change, Kyoto

“The UK should be prepared to accept the contraction and convergenceprinciple as the basis for internationalagreement on reducing greenhouse gasemissions, and should adopt a long-termstrategy for reducing its own emissions.”The UK Royal Commission onEnvironmental Pollution

The integrity of the C&C approach wasreinforced by the 2000 report of the UKRoyal Commission on EnvironmentalPollution42, which concluded:

“Given current knowledge abouthumanity’s impact on climate and the UN Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change’s findings, we support550 ppmv43 as an upper limit on thecarbon dioxide concentration in theatmosphere. Major reductions in globalemissions are necessary to prevent thatlimit being exceeded. The UK should beprepared to accept the contraction andconvergence principle as the basis forinternational agreement on reducinggreenhouse gas emissions, and shouldadopt a long-term strategy for reducingits own emissions.”

The same report also stated:

“There is no foreseeable prospect of some magic source of almost unlimitedenergy with negligible environmentalimpact. Nuclear fusion has sometimesbeen advocated as that, but it is still at the research stage and a commercialscale demonstration plant seems unlikelyto be constructed before 2050. Itsenvironmental impact, as well as itseconomic viability, have yet to beclarified.”

“Contraction and convergence contains elements for the nextagreement that we may ultimately all seek to engage in.” The US Delegation to UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Kyoto

“The UK should be prepared to accept the contraction andconvergence principle as the basis for international agreementon reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and should adopt a long-term strategy for reducing its own emissions.” The UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution


12

AIn situ coalgasification and CO2

sequestration.Credit: Smart et al

The achievement of a sustainable energyeconomy requires a strong energy-research base that addresses the basicdemands we place on the energy systemfor heat, power and mobility. Whether atwork or leisure, people are at the centreof the energy system and so demand-sidesolutions need to be innovated as well assupply-side and infrastructure fixes. Whilemarket forces may act to resolve someaspects of the energy equation, thereare others where the limitation is nottechnology but a lack of clear leadershipand policy development. In the UK we’vehad the ‘dash to gas’ and that is nowwidely recognised as a short termopportunistic response to CO2 emissionsand cost reduction on the back of apractical alternative.

What comes next? Turn back tonuclear? Return to (clean) coal?Go with the wind?

There are many industrial players in thefield and we are all energy consumers.There is no dominant profession. Evenless a universal sense of direction.

The Asia Pacific Partnership on CleanDevelopment and Climate44, involving theUS, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Indiaand China, is essentially a technocraticresponse to energy demand andgreenhouse gas emissions, placingdependency on technological innovationacross a range of energy sources, butparticularly on coal. To its members it isseen as a way of keeping the electronicjuices flowing without the encumbrancesof the Kyoto Protocol (which neither theUS nor Australia has ratified). To others,the Asia Pacific Partnership will not deliveranything like the required reduction in thegrowth of greenhouse gas emissions.

Either way, it would be unwise to relysolely on a technical fix, or imagine thatwe can somehow engineer (in the narrowtechnical sense) a solution – and with itthe unlikely prospect of a free economicgood whilst simultaneously denyingthat individual/corporate/nationalbehaviours need to change in the face ofenvironmental limits. Technical innovationwill be part of the solution, but not alone.

There is no magic bullet.

There are just three approaches:1. Change our behaviour 2. Change the technology3. Change the fuel

Changing behaviour

Whose behaviour?

And at what level – personal,corporate or governmental?

Some of the peoples of the world –particularly those in the developedeconomies – live in a consumer-led,energy intensive and energy wastefulsociety, whether it be in the buildingswe inhabit or occupy, in our travel habits,in the products we consume or throughthe processes of their manufacture anddistribution. The developed world is not arole model for resource efficiency. But forunderstandable reasons, many peoplesin the developing economies and nationsof the world strive to do the same, whilstothers just struggle to survive. Theycannot be denied. And there is nodoubt that the developing economiesare ‘energy poor’.

Behaviour change, which it mightreasonably assumed should be the primaryresponsibility of those making the biggestcontribution to the problem, usuallycomes about – unless by force majeure –through a long process of awareness,acknowledgment, acceptance and onlyfinally by action. For some it halts at stepone, and only moves beyond that by acombination of carrot and stick, whichgenerally either means a combination ofeconomic incentives/instruments, taxes,regulation or legislation.

The opportunities afforded byregulation/legislation should not beignored, not least in the quality of the builtenvironment, where with few exceptions(eg Sweden), the energy efficiencyrequired of new build is derisory. Andgiven the lifetime of buildings, theinefficiencies are locked in unless wayscan be found to retrofit energy efficientmeasures. But surely now it is time thatbuildings were required to conform toan energy efficiency criterion, or if not, tobe required to have some form of energylabelling to acknowledge their energyefficiency at the time of re-sale.

At the international level, theContraction and Convergence Strategy isbased in part on the concept of tradeablepermits, incentivising the big CO2 emittingnations to reduce their emissions by aprice mechanism, purchasing quotas fromunder quota nations in the short term andmeanwhile improving their patterns ofenergy use through a combination ofbehaviour change and technologicalefficiency. In the process, there is anelement of wealth re-distribution andtechnological exchange between thericher and poorer nations. A note ofcaution should be acknowledged – for theenergy poor developing nations, the worstoutcome for them would be to mortgagetheir long-term access to energy on a CO2futures market trading floor and in whichthey could end up being the losers.


13

CO2 Capture

Methane Production

Old Coal Workings

Underground Coal Gasification

CO2 Injection

Oxygen& waterinjection

SyngasProduction Shift

CO to H2POWER

GENERATION

A

Changing the technology

Clean coal technology; CO2 sequestration

Coal is still a major world source of energy,and through stack emissions, a majorsource of CO2 release to the atmosphere.Flue gases can be scrubbed moreefficiently, CO2 extracted and flueemissions reduced. There are variousoptions45 for CO2 sequestration,including: aquifer disposal, injectionin depleted (oil/gas) reservoirs, injectionin Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) processes,sequestering in the form of subseasediment hydrates, ocean disposal andcoal-bed disposal. Enhanced Coal BedMethane (ECBM) production might alsobe an attractive option, involving theinjection of CO2 into coal measures whereit displaces methane from the coal matrix.The methane can be collected and usedas a clean fuel. In a further refinementcurrently being researched, CO2sequestration could be combined within situ coal gasification. This might beone way of releasing coal reserves in theUK and elsewhere that were stranded inrecent years in coal mines deemed to beuneconomic46. And if not necessarily along term solution – it has been said thatcoal, like oil and gas, is simply too valuableto burn47 – CO2 sequestration mightprovide a vital window pending thelong term shift to a much less carbondependent energy cycle and the longterm control of CO2 and other greenhousegas emissions to the atmosphere. Thereare new prospects for coal mines of the21st century.

Nuclear

The nuclear debate is now once againwide open and it will be controversial– within nations and between nations.It is full of conundrums. ‘Carbon freebut not risk free’.

When the world’s first fully commercialnuclear power plant went into service in1956 at Calder Hall in the UK, it wasclaimed it would lead to “electricity toocheap to meter”. It didn’t turn out thatway, and a series of serious accidents(such as at Three Mile Island in the USAin 1979, and at Chernobyl in the formerSoviet Union in 1986), coupled withconcerns following a succession ofincidents connected with nuclear wastedisposal and reprocessing, and morerecently by the threat of world terrorism,have undermined public confidence andsupport for the nuclear option.

Nuclear power evokes very deepemotions, not least because of itshistorical origins as a by-product of anuclear weapons programme. For some,it represents the absolute antithesis ofsustainable development, by leavinga legacy of nuclear waste for futuregenerations to resolve. For others itdoesn’t even rate as a preferred economicoption set against the alternatives, whichis itself revealing in the context of the late20th century privatisation of key utilities:

“In a market economy, private investorsare the ultimate arbiter of what energytechnologies can compete and yieldreliable profits, so to understandnuclear power’s prospects, justfollow the money. Private investorshave flatly rejected nuclear powerbut enthusiastically bought its mainsupply-side competitors – decentralizedcogeneration and renewables.Worldwide, by the end of 2004, thesesupposedly inadequate alternativeshad more installed (new) capacity than nuclear, produced 92% as much

electricity, and were growing 5.9 timesfaster and accelerating, while nuclearwas fading.” (Amory Lovins48)

Some are prepared to take a morereserved position. The UK’s RoyalCommission on Environmental Pollutionsets out the issues for a new generation of nuclear power plants in the UK, bothtechnical and in terms of securing public support and confidence49. Itsrecommendations are precautionary.

“New nuclear power stations should notbe built until the problem of managingnuclear waste has been solved to thesatisfaction both of the scientificcommunity and the general public.Nuclear power could continue to playan important role in reducing UKgreenhouse gas emissions. We do not,however, accept the arguments of thosewho hold that it is indispensable. We donot believe public opinion will permit theconstruction of new nuclear powerstations unless they are part of a strategywhich delivers radical improvementsin energy efficiency and an equalopportunity for the deployment of otheralternatives to fossil fuels which cancompete in terms of cost and reducedenvironmental impacts. Procedures forweighing up these issues will need toallow for debate of a high standard,and at the same time be capable ofarticulating deeply held values andbeliefs.”

This appears to be the position of theUK Government (though some wouldsay its mind is already made up). In theUK (and elsewhere too) it is becomingclear that nuclear power is re-emerging asa carbon-free option, but as the UK SelectCommittee on Environmental Audit50 hasmade clear: “The Government should notallow itself to drift into a position in whichnuclear appears to be the only alternative.”


14

APelamis waveenergy converter.Credit: OceanPower Delivery

BThree Gorges Dam,China.Credit: DigitalGlobe

What is certain is that the nuclearoption needs to be re-engineered –starting with the issues of nuclear wastemanagement and risk. Otherwise,securing the necessary public acceptancewill be difficult. There are already concernsthat keeping the nuclear option open willeffectively foreclose on other carbon freeand renewables opportunities, and oninitiatives to change energy demandbehaviours51.

But nuclear is certainly back on theagenda, as evidenced perhaps moststrikingly by the change of heart by theenvironmental scientist and creator ofthe Gaia hypothesis, James Lovelock52:

“Nuclear power is the only green solution.When, in the 18th century, only onebillion people lived on Earth, their impactwas small enough for it not to matterwhat energy source they used. But withsix billion, and growing, few optionsremain; we cannot continue drawingenergy from fossil fuels and there is nochance that the renewables, wind, tideand water power can provide enoughenergy and in time. Every year that wecontinue burning carbon makes it worsefor our descendants and for civilisation.”

And if nuclear is the only solution, is it asolution that will be available to all nations– or only to some?

Grid versus non-grid?

By and large the power suppliesin the developed economies haveevolved from local generationand local distribution into highlyinterconnected power grids and withgeneration focused on high capacitypower stations of one type or another.

Power systems evolved in this way fortwo principal reasons: to protect againstlocal supply failures by interconnectingconsumers to a wider network, and toachieve economies of scale and plantreliability by concentrating generatingcapacity on larger power plants. Theeconomic price of distribution losseswas deemed worth paying.

The combination of large-scaleinterconnected grids and large-scalegeneration has become the establishedparadigm, and which it might now betime to question. Smaller scale generationequipment is no longer so inferior in termsof unit costs or reliability to justify the highrates of energy losses in the grid. And it isincreasingly the case that grid failures –not generation failures – are the causeof widespread power blackouts, asevidenced by a number of recent largescale power outages in places such as Italy(September 2003), the north-easternstates of the USA and Ontario, Canada(August 2003) and Auckland, NewZealand (January – February 1998). In allthree cases the initial incidents were localand relatively minor, but whose effectscascaded into catastrophic grid failures53.

Such effects had been predicted aslong ago as the mid 1980s by Amory andHunter Lovins, who had warned that thestructure of the North American electricalnetwork made the system fundamentallyvulnerable. When asked recently if thingshad improved in the past two decades,Amory Lovins is reported54 to have said,“I’m surprised the lights are still on.”

“To help Africa meet the UN MillenniumDevelopment Goals, the continent needsenergy. Technology,both large and small, has its role to play.”


15

A B

The paradigm of the interconnectedgrid also has implications for many of therenewable technologies and other small-medium scale power generation options(such as combined heat and powerschemes), which if connected into the gridare likely to add to grid complexity andproneness to progressive catastrophicfailure. There may well be a case forpreferring off-grid/local grid/distributedsolutions for reasons of improved systemsreliability, stability and energy efficiency.And also for enabling low carbon energygeneration to become more established inmainstream energy provision, not just inthe developed economies but in those ofthe developing and emerging economiesof the world.

Changing the fuel

Wind, wave, tidal?

Wind has become a well-established,carbon free energy source, but notwithout its detractors, including thosewho still doubt its economics55; thosewho are against it on environmental/aesthetic/noise grounds; or because itmight endanger migrating birds, and notleast by its intermittency. By its very nature,the availability of wind energy tends tobe in remote and often beautiful parts ofthe world, and often with the additionalproblem of being distant from centresof demand and with poor grid andinterconnector access. Offshore windevokes less opposition, and there are someinteresting examples being developedto make use of redundant offshore oilinfrastructure (platforms and subseapipelines), for example the BeatriceProject in the Moray Firth56.

Wave and tidal energy systems are still very much in development and willbe required to operate in even morehostile environments than wind turbines.

A number of devices are now undergoingextensive marine trials. For example the‘Pelamis’ device, developed by OceanPower Delivery57 in Edinburgh, is nowbeing tested at the European MarineEnergy Centre58 in Orkney and also inPortugal. The fact remains that moreresearch and development (R&D)investment in renewables such aswave and tidal power is required. Forcomparison, in the UK over the last 25years the average R&D spend on nuclearpower has been £230 million per year(75% of the total UK energy R&D budget).Over the period 2001-2004, the averagespend on renewables R&D was just£7 million per year. There has to bea balance.

Hydrogen?

The proportion of renewables that canbe integrated into the existing electricitysystems is ultimately limited by two mainfactors:

1. The intermittent output characteristicsof renewable energy supplies

2. The time-dependent nature of end-useelectricity demand

Electrolysers could provide a means tobalance out these variations and offer agreater capability to capture renewableenergy, temporarily store it and thenreconvert it to electricity. On the demand-side, electrolysers can serve to ‘valley fill’the load profile on a diurnal cycle.

Hydrogen can also be used forseveral applications besides reconversionto electricity, for example as a directcombustion gas and as a fuel for roadvehicles. In the transport sector, a ‘marketpull’ for hydrogen is likely to emerge by2010 and be significant by 202059.

Hydropower?

With some exceptions, often in countrieswith ‘command style’ economies, theconstruction of large-scale hydropowerschemes has declined, primarily dueto concerns over their social andenvironmental impacts. The mostsignificant exception being the$24 billion Three Gorges Dam on theYangtze, containing a storage reservoirof some 600km in length, providingflood control, producing 18 gigawatts ofhydropower, but also displacing almosttwo million people, and resulting in theloss of valuable archaeological andcultural sites, biodiversity loss andenvironmental damage60. Projects such asthe Three Gorges Dam inescapably placethe civil engineer in a difficult role. Civilengineering is not an apolitical activity – ifindeed it ever was – and the civil engineerneeds all the skills of discrimination,judgement and conflict resolution. It alsoaffords the young engineer and studenta very rich learning experience – see forexample the ‘Discovery School’ ThreeGorges Lesson Plan61.

Low head, run-of-the-river schemesoffer some possibilities, and whilst theyare unlikely to have a major impact onthe global energy mix, they could makeimportant contributions locally. A recentproposal62 to use the Congo to generateenough electricity to power Africa’sindustrialisation, put to the UnitedNations Environment Programme (UNEP)Governing Council by the South Africanpower company Eskom, offers a morestrategic contribution. The scheme wouldgenerate a total of 40 gigawatts (twice theoutput of the Three Gorges), with abouthalf coming from a conventionalhydropower hydroelectric plant at theInga Rapids, near the river’s mouth in thewestern Democratic Republic of Congo,and the rest coming from run-of-the-riverschemes and claimed to be moreenvironmentally friendly.


16

ACredit: ABB Access toElectricity, March 2006

BCredit: ABB Access toElectricity, March 2006

CDistribution of worldspend by region.Adapted fromWorldwatch Institute

A B

An energy supply for Africa is a prizeworth seeking. As Monique Barbut63,UNEP said,

“To help Africa meet the UN MillenniumDevelopment Goals, the continent needsenergy. Technology, both large and small,has its role to play… but we must ensurethat this is clean and environmentally-sound technology whether it be coal oroil or wind or solar. Hydro-electricity canalso play its part.”

The engineer’s role indelivering the UN MillenniumDevelopment Goals

The energy needs of the developingworld, in Africa, Asia or Central/Southern America, bring us backto the issues of world povertyand the UN MDGs:

“Energy security is a priority for manygovernments, particularly in recentmonths as fears of oil supply disruptionsdominated the headlines. At theInternational Energy Agency, we viewconcerns about energy security as closelylinked with economic development andenvironment – the “three Es”. In Africa,energy security concerns are also veryreal – without access to ample, reliableand affordable energy, economiescannot develop. In many Africancountries, lack of energy security feedsinto a cycle of poverty. At the beginningof the 21st century, it is unacceptable formillions of people to live without accessto electricity!” (Claude Mandil64)

The impacts of energy poverty are notas widely recognised as those caused byaccess to food, water and shelter, but theyare real and have major social, economicand environmental consequences. In the remote village of Ngarambe, onthe edge of the Selous National Park in

southern Tanzania, 1,800 villagers havereceived electricity through a partnershipbetween ABB, WWF and the localcommunity, with the emphasis placed onworking with local authorities to establishlocal needs to ensure affordable andsustainable solutions. The key featuresof ABB’s ‘Access to Electricity’programme65 are:

■ Providing electricity to low-incomecommunities

■ A bottom-up approach■ A strong focus on affordability■ Prioritising the productive use of

electricity in order to generate socialand economic development

■ Engagement with local partners tobuild skills and know-how

ABB financed the installation of the mini-grid. The villagers contributed by buildingthe generator house and digging trenchesfor power cables. The benefits of theAccess to Electricity programme for thelocal population are tangible: the localschool can now hold classes at night andprovide students with an out-of-hoursplace to study; the number of pupils hasrisen from 250 to 350. At the dispensary,the doctor can now also treat his patientsat night and will be able to install arefrigerator for medicines. Local womenno longer have to make the long climb tothe dunes to collect water from a well butcan draw water locally using a waterpump in the centre of the village. Thereare plans to install a small sawmill and toautomate the maize mill.

Similar projects are being developedin other parts of Africa and Asia. But theeffort needs scaling up if energy povertyis to be addressed at the global level. Andnot just in terms of energy. Only 64% ofAfrica’s population has access to a reliableclean water supply66, which is about thesame percentage that have no access toelectricity67.

Historically, the civil engineer hasplayed a significant role in development,public health and the alleviation ofpoverty by providing the underpinninginfrastructure of civilisation. A similar taskis now waiting to be achieved in the lesser-developed countries.

Lack of access to basic infrastructureis at the root of world poverty and thehuman tragedies associated with it. Twobillion people lack access to safe water;a similar number lack access to a basicpower supply; population growth hasresulted in burgeoning numbers of peopleliving in urban slums, shanty towns andsubstandard buildings, often with no legaltitle to ownership and no connection tobasic infrastructure services. Furthermore,the effects of climate change are likelyto impact most on the poor and thevulnerable, and will be exacerbated unlessunderpinning infrastructure services arein place.

The problems of poverty reduction andinternational development are central tothe eight UN MDGs, adopted by the UNin September 2000, and to which worldgovernments have committed to meetingby 2015. On current evidence, the chancesof them doing so are slight.

In the past, engineers have drivenhighways and railroads across continents,dammed mighty rivers, tunnelled underthe sea and put men on the moon.As engineers we are a key profession inthe implementation of society’s desiresand needs. Yet, our profession needs tochange in response to new social andenvironmental challenges – where weclaimed to “direct the powers of naturefor the use and convenience of mankind”we now need to focus on “working withthe powers of nature for the use andbenefit of society.”


17

0

30

35

25

20

15

10

5

05 10 15

% Share of world private consumption

% S

hare

of

wor

ld p

opul

atio

n

20 25 30 35

1 Australia and New Zealand

2 East Asia and Pacific

3 Latin America and the Caribbean

4 Middle East

5 South Asia

6 Sub Saharan Africa

7 USA and Canada

8 Western Europe

2

3

4

5

6

87

1

C

Prerequisites for development

Humanity now faces its greatestchallenges – addressing issues ofclimate change and sustainability onthe one hand and poverty reductionand governance on the other.

There are certain prerequisites fordevelopment, without which attemptsto improve livelihoods in the developingworld will be unlikely to succeed. Suchprerequisites include reasonablegovernance structures; a functioning civilsociety; and freedom from persecution,conflict, and corruption. In a debate in theScottish Parliament in November 2005:“Malawi After Gleneagles: A Commissionfor Africa Case-Study”, the Director ofthe UN Research Institute for SocialDevelopment, Thandika Mkandawirecited and then amplified the commentsof Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen:

“Development, Amartya Sen68 hassuggested, means the expansion ofchoice for individuals and societies. Itwould be the height of irony if aid, whichhas been used to push for democraticreforms in many countries, were toproduce ‘choiceless democracies’.To support accountability in the newdemocracies, there is a pressing needto rethink the institutions that underpinthe current management of aid. Themessage of my remarks is that aidbelongs to that category of economicactivities in which it is important toproceed by trial and error. This, in turn, requires dialogue and a moredeliberative partnership. African politics is changing rapidly.”

The impact of global politics, trade andconflicts on development is immense.These include trade rules, tariffs andwestern subsidies, local and regionalconflict, oil diplomacy, governance, andthe roles of transnational companies. The importance of a thriving local privatesector (large and small) in povertyalleviation is equally critical. A climate in which individual traders and smallbusinesses can thrive is just as importantas the growth of larger industry. Afunctioning local business sector can alsohelp deliver poverty-reduction outcomesthrough direct involvement in thedevelopment of effective and sustainableinfrastructure, which in turn is of criticalimportance for three reasons:

1. It underpins communities by providingthe basic needs and services of shelter,access to safe water/sanitation, energy,transport, education and healthcare

2. It provides an internal demand for local skills and employment through its delivery

3. It provides a vital platform for thegrowth of the local economy and smalland medium sized enterprises throughimproved access to infrastructureservices, local skills, and the stimulationof and better access to both internal/local and external/national markets

But infrastructure delivery also requiresinvestment.

Those mired in poverty do not haveand cannot afford all the resourcesnecessary to resolve their plight. They willneed external investment from businessand the international agencies, andassistance from the worldwideengineering community.

Humanity nowfaces its greatestchallenges –addressing issuesof climate changeand sustainabilityon the one handand povertyreduction andgovernance on the other.


18

AFormer ICE PresidentColin Clintonin Kibera.Credit: Paul Jowitt

BKibera/Korogochourban slums projectcommunity group.Credit: Paul Jowitt

A

Engineering without Frontiers

The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE),as one of the world’s leadingprofessional engineering bodies,has both an opportunity and a dutyto play a prominent role in humandevelopment and sustainability.

ICE and its members have had a long-standing interest in developmentwork and disaster relief, supporting the establishment of RedR in 1979,establishing the Appropriate DevelopmentPanel in 1984, and establishing the TelfordChallenge (now Engineers AgainstPoverty, EAP) with the Institution ofMechanical Engineers in 1998. ICEapproved its Sustainability Charter in 2003and has been actively working to embedsustainability competencies throughoutthe education and training of the civil engineer.

In November 2003, then ICE PresidentDouglas Oakervee announced in hisPresidential Address his intention toestablish an ICE Commission –“Engineering without Frontiers” (ICE-EwF)to inquire into society’s expectations ofthe engineer in the 21st century, and inparticular to determine the role of theengineer and ICE in achieving the UNMDGs and their contribution tointernational development.

Momentum was continued duringColin Clinton’s year as ICE President, withvisits to a number of development andpoverty reduction projects in Kenya andTanzania. These allowed ICE to see whatthose involved were trying to do, hear oftheir expectations in terms of internationaldevelopment and poverty reduction andestablish ICE’s role in this process.

And Gordon Masterton, the currentICE President, in his Presidential Addresspointed out the critical role of the civilengineer in terms of building civilisations.A ‘Protocol for Engineering a SustainableFuture for the Planet’ is ready for signatureon 4 July 2006 by the Institution of CivilEngineers, the American Society of Civil

Engineers (ASCE) and the CanadianSociety of Civil Engineers (CSCE) attheir triennial conference in London.This will bring together the work of theICE-EwF Commission on InternationalDevelopment and Poverty Reduction, withthose other key interlinked issues of ourtimes – climate change and energy.

ICE-EwF’s relationship to other events canbe gauged by the following timelines:

2002UN Millennium Project established

2003ICE Presidential Commission –“Engineering without Frontiers” (ICE-EwF)

2004UK Prime Minister establishes Africa Commission69

2005 ICE-EwF develops and secures widespreadsupport for its Principles of Engineering forInternational Development and PovertyReduction – formally launched in Nairobiand Dar es Salaam

ICE-EwF Pre-G8 Summit EvidentiaryHearing, 3 June

UK Chancellor leads G8 write-off of LDCdebt, 10 June

G8 Summit in Gleneagles 8 July

ICE-EwF media and related activity inresponse to G8

UN MDG update, September

2006Brunel International Lecture, 6 June

ICE/ASCE/CSCE Protocol: “Engineering a Sustainable Future for the Planet”Triennial Conference, London, 3-4 July

ICE-EwF’s prime tasks were to consider70

1. ExpectationsWhat does society expect of an engineerin the 21st century?

2. Critical activitiesWhat are the critical activities required tomeet the UN MDGs?

3. PartnershipsHow can ICE integrate these ambitionswith related organisations alreadyinvolved?71

These have emerged as follows:

Expectations

“The delivery of effective infrastructureservices appropriate to internationaldevelopment and poverty reduction.”

To provide, maintain, improve and sustainthe infrastructure that supports andunderpins civilisation: ie equitable accessto water supply/wastewater disposal;shelter; transportation systems; wastemanagement and energy.

The same basic requirements applyboth in the developed and developingworlds although the starting points aredifferent and so are some of the requiredsolutions and delivery mechanisms.This in turn requires engineeringeducation/ training/ capacity buildingin ‘development engineering’, notonly in developing countries themselves,but also important to engineers trainedin the UK and similar environmentsengaged in development work.


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B

Critical activities

“Advocacy, influence, and the exercise of the engineering skills to make ithappen.”

The development and deployment ofproject management and appropriateengineering skills necessary to fulfilsociety’s expectations of the engineerto deliver the infrastructure to achievethe UN MDGs.

The adoption of appropriate forms ofprocurement and engineering standardsfor international development.

Partnerships

“The mobilisation of the engineeringcommunity in partnership with othersectors to create the high level deliverymechanisms to scale up the response.”

An engineering vision forMDG implementation

The MDGs viewed as an engineeringproject?

If engineering is truly to deliver the bestpossible outcomes to society, engineersmust understand their role in this widerfield, and shape their work and theircontribution accordingly. So this is ourchallenge:

As key implementers, how can weproduce an action-based plan, to ensurethat the MDGs are met while achievingsustainability worldwide?

It raises some key issues.

Engineering activity must be directedtowards outcomes – measurable againstthe MDG targets themselves – not simplythe construction of infrastructureartefacts, but infrastructure that delivers.

We need to focus on helping toprovide sustainable livelihoods througha ‘people centred’ approach to povertyreduction. Its starting point should be ananalysis of how people survive and thrive,adopting a holistic (systems) view andtaking account of the vital role of cross-sectoral partnerships. Capacity buildingand community involvement is importantif development is to be sustainable andnot imposed inappropriately by externalbodies. Related to this are transactioncosts and livelihoods. Problems for thepoor are often not to do with supply perse, but to do with the costs and access tosupplies and services. This is an importantissue in the debate on the benefits ofprivatisation of utilities and services. It alsoraises the issue of whether there is a casefor a rights-based approach to localgovernance – especially important in thosecommunities, which are excluded by virtueof illegal/disputed property rights.

Emerging technologies will play a role,perhaps not central but neverthelessimportant, for example, renewable energyas a means of local access to power, andwireless communications as a means ofaccess to knowledge and services, andindirectly to gender equality. The limitingfactors are not a lack of engineeringknowledge and technology or knowingwhat needs to be done, but finding waysof applying that engineering technology,building local capacity to ensure itseffective delivery, managing and financingit, and ensuring that its application ismaintained.

Whilst engineers must remainexperts in their particular fields, they mustalso understand – and play an active part in– the interactions between infrastructuredevelopment, the environment, culture/society/community, the economy andthe political/public/private/third sectororganisations involved. Just as withthe development of energy futures,engineering for international developmentis not an apolitical activity.

Some key questions need to be answeredwith regard to:

■ Engineering education andprofessional leadership fordevelopment

■ Appropriate standards, primaryengineering and communityinvolvement

■ Procurement, unblocking barriersand finding effective delivery models

■ Related high level delivery, politicaland business issues

■ Links with engineering organisationsoverseas

■ Tapping the diaspora, capacitybuilding and institutional learning

■ Policy development, advocacy andinfluence

These issues are addressed over thefollowing pages.


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A“Kids Working Big”in San Mateo Ixtatán,Guatemala. Childrendeveloping their own‘engineering’ skills,building fog collectorsto supplementcommunity watersupply under thesupervision of EWBvolunteers.Credit:Christopher Pritchard

Engineering education andprofessional leadership

What should civil engineers of the 21st century be like? To whatextent does the Institution’s valuesand aspirations reflect those of young engineers?

How can society harness theenthusiasm of youth and young engineersto develop their leadership in engineeringdevelopment? Do we currently have theappropriate structures in industry toenable all this to happen? What changesmight be needed to enable industry tosupport engineers who wish to contributeto development in some way?

There is no doubt that engineering’syouth has the energy and motivation tohelp deliver the world from the shadowsof poverty, as amply demonstrated by theactivities of Engineers Without Borders(EWB) – a worldwide movement ofpredominantly young engineers, withnational branches in over 50 countriescovering all the world’s continents. Thisinternational engineering partnership ofyouth represents hope for the future. Inthe UK alone, EWB-UK has 14 branchesand over 2,000 members, and whoseactivities range from running trainingcourses, undertaking research andsupporting international developmentprojects72.

ICE’s routes to professionalmembership explicitly recognisedevelopment engineering as a valid routeto membership73 and ICE is seeking toextend its QUEST Award scheme to otherdeveloping countries along the lines ofthe very successful scheme that has beenoperated in Pakistan over the past fewyears through the Ghulam HaiderScholarship74 to support engineeringstudents through their studies.

Appropriate standards, primaryengineering and communityinvolvement

Are engineering standards, currentlyrequired to attract project funding,creating a barrier to development andwhat are the alternatives? The outcomesimportant to society and to the poorpeople may not be the same as thosemeasured by professionals (ie access maybe more important than road standards).What are the merits of promoting andpractising the concept of primary orlocal resource based engineering?

ICE’s Appropriate Development Panel,members of the ICE-EwF’s PresidentialCommission and others are working todetermine appropriate technical standardsto accelerate development. With supportfrom UNESCO, the Royal Society ofEdinburgh and the UK’s Department forInternational Development (DfID), ICE’sAppropriate Development Panel, EAP,EWB and others are working with ICE’sinternational membership to buildinternational capacity and skills indevelopment engineering.

Procurement, unblocking barriers andfinding effective delivery models

How could development infrastructurebe realised more quickly? What are theproject financing and procurement issues?Could a joint venture ‘pain and gain’model, or multi-sector partnership(involving communities, NGOs, the privatesector, local/national governments,international financial institutions, theprofessional institutions and engineeringyouth) be used to help unblockdevelopment projects?

What is the role of Corporate SocialResponsibility (CSR) in improving pro-pooroutcomes from developmentengineering? Could the benefit of

development funding be improved bytightening conditionality aspects relatingto pro-poor outcomes and povertyreduction? And should there be a moreappropriate form of contract/contractprotocols, involving not just the projectfunder, local client and the contractor/consultant, but also community groups,NGOs and volunteer engineers, and localengineering professions/institutions?

A piece of action-based research onAppropriate Procurement, undertakenby EAP on ICE-EwF’s behalf, has beenparticularly encouraging, resulting in aseries of Round Table meetings in Kenya,Indonesia, India, London and Nigeria75

together with a presentation to UK DfID. The work is now at a stage where it

can be tested, and a number of companieshave offered to apply the AppropriateProcurement Guidelines on real projects.This activity has also benefited from closelinks with Ron Watermeyer (formerPresident of the South African Institution ofCivil Engineers – SAICE) and his significantexperience76, 77, of similar issues in SouthAfrica and internationally. Watermeyer’sexperience and work with respect toprocurement processes in South Africaconfirms that “it is simple to developthe concepts and much more difficultto implement them” – but that it canbe done78, 79.

Watermeyer was seconded to theSouth Africa government in 1995 to lead athree-man procurement reform task teamestablished to reform the procurementsystem from two points of view – goodgovernance and the use of procurementto achieve social objectives. He hadpreviously been project manager ofSoweto’s contractor developmentprogramme and was closely involvedin community-based job creationprogrammes.


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A

In his SAICE Presidential Address,Watermeyer80 stated:

“In South Africa, the question of whobenefits from the construction process,in terms of employment and businessopportunities, has been introduced intothe construction process since the early1990s. In the future, the approach toconstruction will increasingly shift toembrace global issues relating to socialequity and cultural issues, economicconstraints and environmental quality.Projects will in the future be increasinglyassessed in terms of a ‘triple bottomline’ which embraces economic,environmental and social considerations.”

ICE and SAICE/Ron Watermeyer are nowcollaborating on the development of aninternationally recognised protocol forinfrastructure procurement.

Related high level delivery, politicaland business issues

What stance might engineering bodieslegitimately take in relation to politics andbusiness issues? In particular, what mighttheir position be on the issue of servicesprivatisation in developing countries? Inthe 2004 Brunel Lecture, John Banyarddescribed the financial limitations on theprivate sector in providing water for theworld81. The problems are not alwaysfinancial, as recent reports and eventshave shown. According to Action Aid82,donors are still using their influence to:

“…push poor countries into privatisingbasic services such as water, with littleconcern for the views of the publicor poor people’s needs. Donors, inparticular the World Bank, have beencrucial in pushing the Tanzaniangovernment to privatise the watersystem in Dar es Salaam...

Since City Water took over, water tariffshave increased substantially, but waterquality has not improved. Whole areas arebeing cut off because a few householdsfail to pay their bills. Customers continueto receive bills without receiving water,sometimes resulting in bill collectors being‘chased away with dogs and knives’.

Poor people are being marginalised:neither the World Bank, nor thegovernment, nor City Water, have paidmuch attention to the needs of poor men and women.”

The Tanzanian government has sinceterminated its 10-year contract with CityWater consortium, claiming the companyhad made less than half the requiredinvestment and had failed to improveservices. Similar concerns overprivatisation have also been reported bythe UK’s leading water charity WaterAid83.

But there are high level models fordelivery that offer a way forward andwhich reflect the ethos of partnershipbetween engineering organisations,NGOs and local communities, such as thatreferred to previously in terms of access toenergy. In the water sector, the efforts ofmany NGOs such as WaterAid and Oxfammake an invaluable contribution, butagain, the effort needs to be scaled upand involve the international engineeringcommunity. There is growing evidencethat this is beginning to happen. Amongthe emerging initiatives are Water andSanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP)84, a Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Project85,and other business partnerships formedfrom leading engineering consultancies.

The WSUP partnership86 – betweenNGOs, business and academia with theUnited Nations Development Programme(UNDP) as an observer – has a statedmission to:

“advance the UN MDGs for water,sanitation, and associated healthbenefits through multi-sector,stakeholder partnerships deliveringsustainable, equitable, and affordablewater and sanitation services to the urbanpoor in developing countries.”

For these and other partnerships tosucceed, the process of procurement fromthe aid agencies and governments needsto be adapted to provide a more directroute from outline planning and design toproject delivery – such that overheads canbe reduced, the principles of equitableprocurement upheld whilst still offeringa prospect of a reasonable return to thedelivery partnerships.

The RSA project has also been seekingto develop a model for corporateinvestment in water and sanitation in thedeveloping world through partnershipswith local communities and governments,based on the belief that economicdevelopment stimulated by improvedwater and sanitation offers direct benefitsto communities and corporates alike.

The RSA project begins from twopropositions:

1. Aid is inadequate, both in scale andefficiency, to make serious progresson development and that the resourcesneeded for effective development arebetter met by communities, marketsand the private sector

2. The cheapest and the fastest route ofchanging the total poverty cycle is theprovision of water and sanitation

The RSA project is based on the“infrastructure networking” techniquesdeveloped by Project Champion HimanshuParikh (Director, Buro Happold, India),providing integrated water and sanitationinfrastructure at a fraction of the cost of


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APost-earthquakePakistan, constructionof pit latrines.Credit Tim Hayward,RedR-IHE

BPost-tsunami SriLanka, example oftemporary housing.Credit: RedR-IHE

CRedR-IHE LogisticsCourse 2004.Credit: RedR-IHE

conventional methods. The project is stillseeking to attract corporate engagementon the scales required, but meanwhile isworking with the Byrraju Foundation inHyderabad to bring clean water andimproved sanitation to villages in ruralAndhra Pradesh.

Links with engineering organisationsoverseas

Could ICE improve its working linkswith sister engineering organisations indeveloping countries to better understandand support their aspirations and prioritieswith respect to pro-poor development anddisaster risk reduction? How can we worktogether to build capacity in engineeringfor development?

One of the most successful – and mosteffective – organisations for tapping intoengineering and related expertise in timesof humanitarian crisis has been RedR –Engineers for Disaster Relief – establishedby Peter Guthrie in 1980, as a result of hisexperience working with Oxfam as theonly engineer for the Vietnamese boatpeople in Malaysia. He “saw the pressingneed for engineers to help in this sort ofwork and compiled a register of engineers,who volunteered from across theengineering profession, who would beavailable at short notice to work withfront-line relief agencies”. Guthrie’svision has evolved into an internationalfederation of RedRs providing trainingand recruitment services for humanitarianprofessionals across the world, with officesand branches in Australia, Canada, EastAfrica, India, London and New Zealand.In 2003, RedR-London merged with theInternational Health Exchange to becomeRedR-IHE. The International HealthExchange brought the added valueof 22 years of health expertise fromthe relief and development sector.

RedR has widespread cross-sectoralsupport. In the wake of a variety of both

natural and man-made disasters thebusiness community has been preparedto assist RedR through direct sponsorshipand by the release of personnel toundertake particular RedR missions torelieve humanitarian suffering across theworld. Perhaps it is now time to considerhow the skills of RedR and its experience in disaster relief can be moved upthe “supply chain” to build a widerpartnership to assist in disaster prevention,risk reduction and the relief of world poverty.

Tapping the diaspora, capacitybuilding and institutional learning

Concerns are often expressed aboutthe migration of skilled manpower(engineers, nurses, doctors, teachersetc) from developing countries, insome cases as a result of activerecruitment from the developedworld. As noted by Calestous Juma87,this diaspora need not be a whollynegative phenomenon:

“The real policy challenge for Africancountries is figuring out how to tap the expertise of those who migrate and upgrade their skills while in thediaspora, not engage in futile efforts to stall international migration. The most notable case is the Taiwanesediaspora, which played a crucial role in developing the country’s electronicsindustry. This was a genuine partnershipinvolving the mobility of skills andcapital. Countries such as India are now understudying this model.” Calestous Juma

But as Juma also notes, along with otherssuch as former ICE President Tony Ridleyand Gordon Conway (former Presidentof the Rockefeller Foundation, now ChiefScientific Advisor at the UK Departmentfor International Development),infrastructure development offers a

vital opportunity for capacity building,technological learning, and thedevelopment of local businesses. Anexample of the integration of education,capacity building and practice basedlearning is described by Conway88:

“An interesting experiment to try andrectify (the lack of suitably qualifiedpersonnel working at the local level) isbeing conducted at Makerere Universityin Uganda as part of the government’sprogram of decentralisation. TheUniversity is embarking on a largeprogram of training young Ugandansfor service in local government – inagriculture, health, planning etc –building into the curricula extendedperiods where the students spend timeas interns in local government offices.Equally important, however, is theparticipation of the intendedbeneficiaries – the rural poor –themselves. We have long embracedthe notion of such participation, butfar too often this has been rhetorical.”

The benefits of this general approach arealso noted by Ridley and Lee89 withspecific reference to infrastructure:

“Infrastructure development provides afoundation for technological learning,because infrastructure uses a wide rangeof technologies and complex institutionalarrangements. Governments traditionallyview infrastructure projects from a staticperspective…they seldom consider thatbuilding railways, airports, roads andtelecommunications networks couldbe structured to promote technological,organisational and institutional learning.”Tony Ridley and Dato’ Ir Yee-Cheong Lee


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A B C

Policy development, advocacyand influence

To what extent and how should theInstitution make its members moreaware of the issues surroundingdevelopment and sustainability?Involvement in high-level policyissues will always have thepotential to be controversial.

But, ICE must be bold. It must:

■ Advocate to government, business and theinternational community the vital importance ofeffective infrastructure in the fight against poverty90

■ Argue and demonstrate the need for appropriateprocurement processes engaging the internationalengineering community together with developingthe local economy and the local skills base

■ Play a major role in the Anti Corruption Forum91

to fight corruption in internationaldevelopment projects

■ Build and support the international engineeringcommunity in creating the partnerships to deliver

■ Advocate its view that the UN MDGs will onlybe met if they are treated as a series of projects,with a project management plan, and which civilengineering is well placed to help to deliver


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We need to communicate and advocatethese positions vigorously – togovernments, businesses, our membersand other stakeholders. We are doingthis already: in a UK Parliamentarydebate on international developmentTony McWalter92 stated:

“In the body of evidence is a memorandumfrom ICE, and if Members are interestedin reading only one memorandum,they should read that one, becauseit contains so much that is relevantto our essential problem.” Tony McWalter MP

We will continue to do this by establishingan International Development StakeholderForum to influence the key players anddecision-makers.

And we need to prepare ourselves– our people, our profession and ourindustry – for the challenges that needto be faced and resolved.

In the build up to the G8 Summit inGleneagles in July 2005, ICE-EwF helda Pre-G8 Summit: “Scaling it Up” inJune. UN Millennium Project AdvisorCalestous Juma sent the followingmessage for the event:

“There is one practical area of focuswhich is how to build engineeringcompetence in Africa and it iscritical for your meeting to send clearmessages about the transition fromdelivering ‘aid’ to helping to buildcompetence. This is the only gamein town that people will play.”Calestous Juma

“In the body of evidence is a memorandumfrom ICE, and if Members are interested inreading only one memorandum, they shouldread that one, because it contains so muchthat is relevant to our essential problem.”Tony McWalter MP

The event attracted over 70 participantsfrom industry, the UK Government’sDepartment for InternationalDevelopment, UNESCO, NGOs and ICETechnical Boards and members to exploreways of “Scaling Up” the response tomeeting the UN MDGs, and to mobilisethe response from the industry.

The Summit was followed by a mediacampaign and political influencing, issuingthe key messages on the following page.


25

Key messages to G8 leaders and the media

“The ICE-EwF Commission welcomes the outcomes from the G8 summit andthe move to write off LDC debt. The door is now open for engineers to work inpartnership with other key stakeholders – communities, governments, NGOs,international agencies and financial institutions to start work on the criticalinfrastructure – in particular water supply and sanitation – needed to achievethe UN MDGs: – ‘to measure the health of a nation, count the number of taps,not the number of hospital beds’.”

“ICE will be communicating these views to G8 leaders and the UN, advocatingthe ICE-EwF ‘Principles for Development and Poverty Reduction’ as a platformfor partnership, collaboration and delivery by all parties.”

“The world is at a tipping point in terms of international development and the UNMDGs. There is a window of opportunity, opened further by the mood of publicopinion, the work of the Africa Commission and the pressure on the G8 leadersat Gleneagles in July, to address poverty reduction and climate change.”

“Engineering and engineers have a vital role to play over the next 10 years, makingtheir contribution to development and poverty reduction and the achievementof the UN MDGs.”

“The engineering community is ready to unlock the human endeavour, to createthe international partnerships, and build the infrastructure that will reduce worldpoverty and deliver the UN MDGs – on time, on budget.”

“Will us the means and the engineering community will deliver the ends.”


26

A – BThe long march tomaking povertyhistory.Credit: Paul Jowitt

The next steps

International development andpoverty reduction is now firmly highup on both the international politicalagenda and the Institution’s.

In both cases, this represents a seachange in recent times. Despite scepticismfrom some quarters, never has the issueof international development been soprominent in the minds of the public(both in the UK and internationally), theinternational community (governmental,inter-governmental), NGOs, business,and not least, across the generations ofICE’s own membership. It is also coupled,through the UN MDGs and the 2005 G8summit, with the other major global issuesof our times – climate change, carbonemissions and energy policy.

As one ICE-EwF Commissioner andformer ICE VP has indicated:

“The Institution has a role to representits individual members on a collectivebasis, and by doing so, to influencefor the public good the direction ofgovernment and society.

This has the uncomfortableconsequence that ICE must havea position on issues that it hashistorically choked on.”

The challenge for ICE – and others– is how to embed and build on whathas been achieved so far, transferringmomentum to other bodies outsideICE establishing effective interactionsand relationships to move the agendaforward and to create multi-dimensionalpartnerships for delivery within andbeyond the engineering community.

We need to start the process ofengineering civilisation out of poverty and away from the threat of climatechange – now.

■ Engineering the world away from theequally long shadows thrown by anenergy and environmental crisis andwith global climate at a tipping point

■ Engineering the poor out of the darkshadows cast by world poverty andthe misery it generates

Postscript: paying the price?

Brunel, Bazalgette, Bentham,Brundtland…

At the beginning of the 21st centurypeople such as Bob Geldof and Bono have mobilised international opinion. To reiterate:

“We are the first generation that can lookextreme poverty in the eye, and say thisand mean it – we have the cash, we havethe drugs, we have the science. Do wehave the will to make poverty history?”

Be in no doubt: There will be 21st centuryengineering heroes to parallel Bruneland Bazalgette.

The engineering community is ready tounlock the human endeavour,to createthe international partnerships and buildthe infrastructure that will reduce worldpoverty, ready to deliver the UN MDGs– on time, on budget.

Will us the means and the engineeringcommunity will deliver the ends.


27

A B

The engineeringcommunity is readyto unlock the humanendeavour, to create theinternational partnershipsand build the infrastructurethat will reduce worldpoverty, ready to deliverthe UN MDGs – on time,on budget.

Will us the means andthe engineering communitywill deliver the ends.


28

Kate Beckmann (The Scottish Instituteof Sustainable Technology)

Rod Bridle (Member of ICE Council)Mark Broadhurst (Chairman of ICE

Environment and Sustainability Board)Peter Cameron (Chair ADP)Jonathan Carr-West (RSA)Mike Chrimes (ICE)Colin Clinton (former ICE President)Richard Coackley (Chairman of ICE

Regional Policy Affairs Panel)Andrew Crudgington (ICE)Ruth Dennett (ICE)Lindsey Dimmick (ICE)Jonathan Essex (ICE-EwF)Emily Falconer (ICE)Tom Foulkes (ICE)Thomas van Gilst, (WSUP)Peter Hansford (ICE Vice President)John Hawkins (ICE) Peter Head (Arup)Camilla Herd (formerly EAP)Ed Horton (ICE)Tim Khan (ICE Bangladesh)Andrew Lamb (EWB)Bobby Lambert (RedR) Allyson Lewis (ICE)Gordon Masterton (ICE President)Petter Matthews (EAP)Alasdair Mcleod (ICE Dundee Branch) Anne Moir (ICE)Anders Nordstrom (ABB)Douglas Oakervee (former ICE President)Tony Ridley (former ICE President)Kumbwaeli Salewi (ILO, Dar es Salaam)Jon Side (International Centre for Island

Technology, Heriot-Watt University)Bridget Tracy (ICE)Ron Watermeyer (former President SAICE)

All ICE-EwF Presidential CommissionMembers and Advisors

Members of ‘the Edge’

Acknowledgments


29

Paul W Jowitt BSc(Eng), PhD, DIC, CEng, CEnv, FICE,FRSA, FCGI, FRSE

Paul Jowitt is Professor of CivilEngineering Systems and ExecutiveDirector of the Scottish Institute ofSustainable Technology at Heriot-Watt University. He is also a BoardMember of Scottish Water.

He is a graduate of Imperial College,London and was a Lecturer in the CivilEngineering Department there from1974, until he took up the Chair of CivilEngineering Systems at Heriot-WattUniversity in 1987. In 1989 he wasappointed Head of the Civil EngineeringDepartment and then Head of thecombined Department of Civil andOffshore Engineering from 1991 to 1999.

Since 1999 he has been ExecutiveDirector of the Scottish Institute ofSustainable Technology(www.sistech.co.uk), a joint venturebetween the University and ScottishEnterprise, established to put sustainabilityinto practice. Its operational activitiesare based at Heriot-Watt University(predominantly at its main campusin Edinburgh but with links to theInternational Centre for IslandTechnology in Orkney).

Paul Jowitt’s major researchinterests concern the issues of sustainabledevelopment, risk, and the developmentof systems-level solutions within civilengineering, the built environment andenvironmental management. A recentpaper for the Institution of Civil Engineers(ICE) on the educational formation of thecivil engineers and their role in terms ofsustainable development was awardedthe 2005 ICE Trevithick Prize.

Major areas of activity have includedwater resources systems modelling,asset and resource management andthe environmental and engineeringapplications of systems modelling,optimisation, reliability and riskassessment. This research has beenfunded mainly by a combination ofresearch grants and water industryresearch contracts in such areas as

water distribution systems, wastewatertreatment plant modelling & control,drought management and sustainablewater resource management.

Paul Jowitt is Vice-President of theInstitution of Civil Engineers, and Chairof the ICE Presidential Commission(“Engineering without Frontiers”) toexamine society’s expectations of thecivil engineer in the 21st century andthe engineer’s contribution to meetingthe UN Millennium Development Goals.He also serves on ICE’s Environment andSustainability Board and was Chair ofan ICE Council Task Group to embedsustainable development into civilengineering curricula and professionaldevelopment. He is a former Chairmanof the East of Scotland Region of ICEand the Scottish Hydrological Group.

He is Editor of the international journal‘Civil Engineering and EnvironmentalSystems’, a former Editor of ICE’s Water,Maritime and Energy Journal (1998-2001). In 1996 he presented a lectureon water resources at the EdinburghInternational Science Festival entitled“From the Metamorphosis of Ajax to theSweet Water of Leith”. He is a memberof ‘The Edge’ – an ICE/RIBA/CIBSE GingerGroup created to increase public andpolitical awareness of the role ofengineers and architects.

In his private life he enjoys old carsand old houses. He is the co-ownerand restorer of one of Edinburgh’s lastsurviving (and B-listed) mews stablesproperties adjacent to the Water of Leithin Edinburgh’s Dean Village. Since 1966he has been the owner, driver and restorerof a 1937 Morgan Motor Tricycle (aMatchless MX4 990cc V-Twin poweredBarrel Back Super Sports). He also enjoyspainting and sculpture, and, when giventhe chance, sailing.

He is a trustee of the charity EngineersAgainst Poverty, the Forth Bridges VisitorCentre Trust, and The Steamship Sir WalterScott Trust.

About the Author


30

1 Joint Science Academies’ Statement: “Global Response to Climate Change”,June 2005, http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/displaypagedoc.asp?id=13618

2 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”, 2001;http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/wg2SPMfinal.pdf

3 Jonathan A. Patz, Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, Tracey Holloway and JonathanA. Foley; “Impact of regional climate change on human health”, Nature 438,310-317, 17 November 2005.

4 National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Department ofCommerce. http://www.noaa.gov/hurricaneandrew.html

5 David Cook and John Kirke, “Urban Poverty: addressing the scale of theproblem”, Municipal Engineer 156 ME4, 2003.

6 The Millennium Development Goals were first set out during the 1990s, andlater compiled and became known as the International Development Goals.The Goals were recognised by the UN General Assembly as being part of theroad map for implementing the UN’s Millennium Declaration. There are eightoverall Goals (on Poverty, Education, Gender, Child Mortality, Maternal Health,HIV/AIDS, Environment, Global Partnership).

7 Calestous Juma (Professor of the Practice of International Development,Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University), Editor, “Going forGrowth: Science, Technology and Innovation in Africa); Published by the SmithInstitute; 2005; ISBN 1 902488 97 0.

8 Bono: http://www.worldvision.org.nz/rampant/MakePovertyHistory

“We are the first generation that can look extreme poverty in the eye, and saythis and mean it – we have the cash, we have the drugs, we have the science.Do we have the will to make poverty history? In 2005, the leaders of richcountries have the opportunity to lift millions of people out of poverty. At theG8 Summit, at the UN Special Session on the Millennium Development Goals,and at a ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization, trade rules,aid, and the unsustainable debt of developing countries – issues critical to thefuture of the world’s poorest people – will be up for discussion. But will worldleaders deliver on their rhetoric? In 2000, rich countries made a commitmentto play their part in ensuring that the MDGs are met – but their promisesremain unfulfilled. Five years later, they should ensure that a new round ofinternational summitry becomes a platform for action.”

9 Adrian Vaughan, “Isambard Kingdom Brunel: Engineering Knight Errant”;John Murray; ISBN: 0-7195-5282-6; 1991.

10 The full version of Tredgold’s definition is as follows, which shows the stronginterconnection between civil engineering and the economic cycle:

“Civil Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of Power in Naturefor the use and convenience of man; being that practical application of themost important principles of natural Philosophy which has in a considerabledegree realised the anticipations of Bacon, and changed the aspect and stateof affairs in the whole world. The most important object of Civil Engineering isto improve the means of production and of traffic in states, both for externaland internal Trade. This applied in the construction and management of Roads– Bridges – Rail Roads – Aqueducts – Canals – River Navigation – Docks, andStorehouses for the convenience of internal intercourse and exchange; – and inthe construction of Ports – Harbours – Moles – Breakwaters – and Lighthouses,and in the navigation by artificial Power for the purposes of commerce.”

11 Gro Harlem Brandtland was a Norwegian Labour politician and Prime Ministerthree times between 1981and 1996 and Director-General of the World HealthOrganization (WHO) from 1998–2003.

12 “The Brundtland Report: Our Common Future”, World Commission onEnvironment and Development, OUP, ISBN-10: 0-19-282080-X; ISBN-13:978-0-19-282080-8, 1987.

13 Bent Flyvbjerg, Mette Skamris Holm, and Søren Buhl, “Costs in Public WorksProjects: Error or Lie?” Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 68,No. 3, Summer 2002. American, Planning Association, Chicago, IL.

14 Bent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius and Werner Rothengatter, “Megaprojects andRisk – An Anatomy of Ambition”, Cambridge University Press, 2003, 218pp,ISBN-13: 9780521009461.

15 The Atmospheric Railway,http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/industrialisation/brunel_isambard_02.shtml

16 Bazalgette’s French grandfather arrived in London in around 1775 via theAmericas and Jamaica, a rich man, a property owner, a creditor of Royalty, andsometimes described as a tailor. Bazalgette’s father served in the Royal Navy.He was wounded in 1809 and retired with the rank of Commander in 1814.Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s father Marc was also a navy man – in the FrenchNavy, but for political reasons he fled to New York where he became the cityengineer, before arriving in England in 1799 and then working for the Admiralty.

17 “Sir Edwin concluded his somewhat prolix communication by advocatingthe bringing down of fresh air from a height, by means of such as structuresas the Eiffel Tower, and distributing it, warmed and fresh, in our buildings”.A discussion at the Royal Society of Arts on the disposal, of sewage, reportedby The Builder, 1 February 1890, pp350-1. Chadwick’s suggestion, if somewhatinadvertent, relates much more to the natural ventilation of buildings in the21st century… Right solution, wrong problem!

18 It was also Chadwick who had earlier written to Councillor John Shuttleworthof Manchester in 1844: “For all purposes it would be of the greatest importancethat you should get the advice of trustworthy engineers, of whom I am sorry tosay there are marvellous few – a more ignorant and jobbing set of men I haverarely met with.” He would be confounded…

19 Stephen Halliday, “The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and theCleansing of the Victorian Metropolis”, Sutton Publishing, 1999,ISBN:0750919752.

20 The Times, 16 March 1891, p4, “Joseph Bazalgette: That great, far-sightedengineer, who probably did more good, and saved more lives, than any singleVictorian public official. When the New Zealander comes to London, a thousandyears hence, to sketch the ruins of St Paul’s, the magnificent solidity and thefaultless symmetry of the great granite blocks which form the wall of theThames Embankment will still remain to testify that, in the reign of Victoria,‘jerry-building’ was not quite universal. Of the great sewer that runs beneath,Londoners know, as a rule, nothing, though the Registrar-General could tellthem that its existence has added twenty years to their chance of life”.

21 Professor Jon Side, “A new enlightenment: engineering a sustainable future”,International Centre for Island Technology, Stromness, Orkney, InauguralLecture, Heriot-Watt University, February 2001.

22 David Elms “Why are we here?” in Elms D G and Wilkinson D (1995),“The Environmentally, Educated Engineer: Focus on Fundamentals”;CAE Publications, New Zealand Canterbury, NZ. ISBN 0-908993-08-0, pp 15-23.

23 Joseph A Schumpeter, “The Creative Response in Economic History”, Journalof Economic History, Vol 7, pp149-159, 1947.

24 Professor Tony Ridley and Dato’ Ir Yee-Cheong Lee, “Infrastructure, innovationand development”, ch 5, “Going for Growth: Science, Technology andInnovation in Africa); Calestous Juma (Editor) Published by the Smith Institute;2005; ISBN 1 902488 97 0.

Endnotes


31

25 Calestous Juma, Reinventing Growth, ch 1, “Going for Growth: Science,Technology and Innovation in Africa); Calestous Juma (Editor) Published bythe Smith Institute; 2005; ISBN 1 902488 97 0.

26 Common Crisis – North-South: Co-operation for World Recovery; The BrandtCommission 1983; Pan Books, ISBN 0 330 28130-5.http://www.brandt21forum.info/BrandtCommission2.htm; see also theCommission for Africa:http://www.commissionforafrica.org/english/about/story.html

27 Economics is often referred to as ‘that dismal science’, but not for the reasonscommonly supposed. The term ‘dismal science’ was first used by ThomasCarlyle in a criticism of the economist John Stuart Mill for his support of theabolition of slavery. See for example the article by Professor Gavin Kennedyat http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/carlyle/kennedy1.html.

28 Jeremy Bentham, “Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation”,1789.

29 Occam’s Razor, also called the law of parsimony, a principle stated by Williamof Ockham (1285–1347/49). ‘Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate’ –Plurality should not be posited without necessity. The principle gives precedenceto simplicity; of two competing theories, the simplest explanation of an entity isto be preferred. Occam’s Razor, (2006), Encyclopædia Britannica.;http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9056716?query=occams%20razor&ct

30 Geoffrey Heal, “Interpreting Sustainability”, Columbia Business School,Working Paper PW-95-24,1996.(http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/gheal/General%20Interest%20Papers/pw-95-24.pdf).

31 The Atlantic Heat Conveyor: eg seehttp://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/rapid/sis/atlantic_conveyor.php

32 Bill McGuire, “The UK Under Threat”, Benfield Hazard Research Centre.http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=1408&parasStartAt=1

33 BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2005.http://www.bp.com/statisticalreview.

34 Gregory A. Keoleian; School of Natural Resources and Environment;Co-Director, Center for Sustainable Systems; University of Michigan.

35 Benjamin Dessus; The energy dossier: Learning curves in energy use;Le Monde Diplomatique; http://mondediplo.com/2005/01/10energyuse

36 Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons”, Science, 162, 1968:1243-1248; http://dieoff.org/page95.htm

37 The Global Commons Institute (GCI) which was founded in1990 by musician Aubrey Meyer (see/hear http://www.bigpicture.tv/index.php?id=36&cat=&a=63 ) after the Second World ClimateConference is an independent group concerned with the protection of the“Global Commons”. GCI has contributed to the work of the UN FrameworkConvention on Climate Change (UN FCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC). www.gci.org.uk; 42 Windsor Road, London, NW2 5DS.

38 UK House of Commons Select Committee on Environmental Audit, 29th March 2005;http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmenvaud/105/4120103.htm

39 The Global Commons Institute;http://www.gci.org.uk/Archive/MegaDoc_19.pdf; page 116.

40 The Global Commons Institute;http://www.gci.org.uk/nairobi/AFRICA_GROUP.pdf

41 The Global Commons Institute;http://www.gci.org.uk/temp/COP3_Transcript.pdf

42 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. http://www.rcep.org.uk/pdf/ar-summary.pdf; http://www.rcep.org.uk/newenergy.htm

43 Note: A concentration of 550 parts per million by volume (ppmv) isapproximately double the pre-industrial level. The current concentrationsare ~370 ppmv.

44 Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development & Climate; for various reportssee: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060111-8.htmlhttp://www.hindu.com/2005/10/25/stories/2005102501841000.htmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4602296.stm

45 Bahman Tohidi, Research Consultation Document, “On Reducing the emissionof greenhouse gases; CO2 sequestering”, Institute of Petroleum Engineering,Heriot-Watt University, EH14 4AS.

46 Brian Smart et al, “Creating the Coalmine of the 21st Century”, A Technicaland Economic Feasibility Study of the Application of In-Situ Gasificationto the Extraction of Scotland’s Coal, Coupled with CO2 Sequestration,Heriot-Watt University.

47 Jon Side, Personal Communication relating to a conversation between himand his former mentor Cliff Johnston.

48 Amory B. Lovins (CEO, Rocky Mountain Institute), “Competitors To Nuclear:Eat My Dust”; Rocky Mountain Institute;http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid1151.php

49 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. http://www.rcep.org.uk/pdf/ar-summary.pdf; p10

50 UK Select Committee on Environmental Audit, 2002

51 Jon Side & Paul Jowitt, “Nuclear Power by The Back Door – the Biggest Obstacleto Renewables”, Holyrood Magazine, 1 April 2002, pp22-23

52 “Coming clean about nuclear power”, [email protected];http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040913/pf/040913-23_pf.html

53 List of power outages, Wikipedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Italy_blackout;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_North_America_blackouthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Auckland_power_crisis;

54 Sarah Wolfe and Thomas Homer-Dixon “The Matrix of Our Troubles”,The Globe & Mail, Canada, 16 August 2003;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/freeheadlines/LAC/20030816/COTAD16/comment/Comment

55 David Simpson, “Tilting at Windmills: The Economics of Wind Power”,The David Hume Institute; Hume Occasional Paper No. 65, April 2004.

56 The Beatrice Wind Farm Demonstrator Project;http://www.beatricewind.co.uk/home/

57 Ocean Power Delivery; http://www.oceanpd.com/ ;http://www.oceanpd.com/Anims/pelamis_V4.html

58 European Marine Technology Centre; http://www.emec.org.uk/

59 The London Hydrogen Partnership, http://www.lhp.org.uk;http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/environment/energy/hydrogen.jsp

60 Three Gorges Dam, see http://www.irn.org/programs/threeg/ and alsohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam

61 http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/programs/threegorges/#aca


32

62 Aquamedia Newsletter,http://www.aquamedia.at/templates/_printversion.cfm/id/15622

63 Monique Barbut, UNEP, Director of Division of Technology Industry andEconomics; Environment News Service, http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2005/2005-02-25-02.asp

64 Claude Mandil, (Executive Director, The International Energy Agency),“The International Energy Agency and Africa”,http://www.iea.org/textbase/papers/2003/african_energy.pdf

65 ABB Access to Electricity Program, http://www.abb.com/

66 UNESCO: http://www.wateryear2003.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=4874&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

67 Céline Kauffmann, Energy and Poverty in Africa, Policy Insights No. 8http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/39/54/34961237.pdf

68 Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.

69 Commission for Africa: http://www.commissionforafrica.org

70 Some details of the work of the ICE-EwF Commission are downloadable from:http://www.sistech.co.uk/SISTechICEonlineprojects.htm

71 Specifically: ADP, RedR, EAP and ICE’s Technical Boards:ADP: ICE’s Appropriate Development Panel; RedR: The Register of Engineers for Disaster Relief (an independent Charitysupported by ICE); EAP: Engineers Against Poverty (an independent Charity supported by ICE,IMechE and other institutions/companies.

72 Engineers without Borders-UK, http://www.ewb-uk.org/about?PHPSESSID=1e264770fae583a60469a60723092c87

Engineers without Borders International, http://www.ewb-international.org/

73 ICE 3000 Series, Membership Guidance Notes;http://www.ice.org.uk/joining/document_details.asp?Docu_id=1336&intPage=1&faculty=

74 The Ghulam Haider Scholarship; http://www.ice.org.uk/myice/myice_scholarships_quest_undergraduates.asp#lahore

75 EAP has led this process on behalf of ICE-EwF with input from the ICE Contractsand Disputes Group (John Hawkins), facilitation support/advice from ICE Areas/International, ICE Country Representatives and the DfID Infrastructure Group.An Expert Advisory Panel chaired by Peter Hansford has guided and monitoredthe research. A number of companies have expressed interest in trialling theoutcomes.

76 Ron Watermeyer, “Facilitating Sustainable Development Through Public andDonor Procurement Regimes: Tools and Techniques”, Public Procurement LawReview 13(1): 30-55, 2004.

77 Ron Watermeyer, “Transparency within the South African Public ProcurementSystem”, presented at the 2nd IWOGDA brainstorming meeting, CUTS, JaipurJune 28-29, 2004.

78 Ron Watermeyer, Personal Communication, 27 December 2005.

79 Ron Watermeyer, “Poverty reduction responses to the Millennium DevelopmentGoals”, The Structural Engineer, Vol 84, 9, pp27-34, 2006.

80 Ron Watermeyer, “The Sustainable Lifestyle: Our Responsibility for the 21stCentury”. http://www.civils.org.za/pdf/saice-pa-2004.pdf.

All website links correct at time of going to print.

81 John Banyard, “Water for the World – Why is it so Difficult?” 5th BrunelInternational Lecture, ICE 8 June 2004.

82 R Greenhill and I Wekiya, “Turning off the taps: donor conditionality and waterprivatisation in Dar es Salaam”, Tanzania. London, UK, ActionAid. 20pp, 2004,http://www.actionaid.org.uk/_content/documents/TurningofftheTAps.pdf

83 “New Rules, New Roles: Does PSP benefit the poor?” WaterAid/The Tearfund.http://www.wateraid.org.uk/documents/summaries.pdf

84 Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor, http://www.wsup.com/

85 Royal Society of Arts: “Engaging Enterprise in Water and EnvironmentalSanitation Development”,http://www.rsa.org.uk/projects/engaging_enterprise_in_water.asp

86 WSUP partners: CARE International UK, WaterAid, WWF, the Halcrow Group,RWE-Thames Water, Unilever and the Institute of Water and Environment atCranfield University.

87 Calestous Juma, “Reinventing Growth”, ch 1, “Going for Growth: Science,Technology and Innovation in Africa); Calestous Juma (Editor) Published bythe Smith Institute; 2005; ISBN 1 902488 97 0.

88 Gordon Conway, “The Paradoxes of Integrated Development”, KeynoteAddress at the ECOSOC Brainstorming Dialogue Sessions: “Promoting anintegrated approach to rural development in developing countries for povertyeradication and sustainable development”, UN headquarters, New York,24 March 2003.

89 Professor Tony Ridley and Dato’ Ir Yee-Cheong Lee, “Infrastructure, innovationand development”, ch 5, “Going for Growth: Science, Technology andInnovation in Africa); Calestous Juma (Editor) Published by the Smith Institute;2005; ISBN 1 902488 97 0.

90 For example the ICE submission to the International Development SelectCommittee Inquiry on Private Sector Development, 2006.(http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmintdev/uc921-iii/uc92102.htm)

91 Transparency International, Anti Corruption Forum,http://ww1.transparency.org/pressreleases_archive/nat_chaps_press/2005/dnld/2005.09.15.Anti-Corruption_Forum.PDF

92 Hansard 17 March 2005: Column 164WH: Tony McWalter MP and member ofthe Commons Science and Technology Committee, Westminster Hall Debate onInternational Development; see also UK House of Commons Select Committeeon Science and Technology Minutes of Evidence:http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/133/4060903.htm


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