Foreword
Creating Value by Engineering With Nature We rely on natural processes and landscapes to sustain human life and well-being. Our energy, water, infrastructure, and agricultural systems use these processes and landscapes to satisfy our most basic human needs. One motivation, therefore, for protecting the environment is to sustain the ecosystem goods and services upon which we depend. As we emerge from the sixth decade of modern environmentalism, there is a growing international awareness of opportunities to efficiently and effectively integrate natural and engineered systems to create even more value. These opportunities are being realized through innovative • • • •
application of scientific and engineering principles to design, construct, and implement efficient systems; use of natural processes and systems to maximize benefit; development of integrated systems to produce a more diverse array of economic, environmental, and social benefits; and collaborations and partnerships across perspectives, disciplines, and organizations to deliver better outcomes.
A large and growing community of interests and organizations around the world are contributing to these advancements in practice. The Engineering With Nature (EWN ) ® ® initiative in the United States—led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), along with its partners and collaborators—is pursuing a vision for water infrastructure based on the intentional alignment of natural and engineering processes to efficiently and sustainably deliver economic, environmental, and social benefits through collaboration. The EWN Strategic Plan 2018-2023 is guiding actions to broaden and deepen partnerships, expand capabilities, and increase application and communication in order to deliver, demonstrate, and document the approach’s benefits. Sharing practices and progress across the international community is essential for building momentum for future integration of natural and human systems. This book was developed to communicate the diversity of projects, contexts, and organizations
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