Engineering for a just and sustainable future

Engineering can help make the world a better place. It can help to provide better access to water, health food, shelter, education, warmth. As engineers, we have the potential to help make structural changes that will change people’s lives. For better or for worse. Certainly engineers have the potential to help make the world a better place, but they can also destroy it. And so far, alongside improving the standard of living of a great many people, we have also done a very good job at harming our planet and changing irreparably the way many people live, for the worse. What is clear for the engineeri is what we do have the tools and knowledge to move socieities and communities in different directions. What usually happens is that we follow the demands of the politicians, the CEOs and the economists. Recently however, it has been suggested that if we are true professionals, key deicisions ought to involve engineers, and we need to contribute to the policies that will ultimately determine what we do and how we do it.