SUSTAINABILITY AND ENGINEERING FUTURES A Book Review
By Leopold P. Mureithi
T
new nightmares in an unknown future? …. We know that
and Development (WCED) of 1987. It def ined this as growth
such processes. But how can we include these dynamics
that “meets the needs of the present without compromising
in technological decision-making and design? And who
the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”
should lead that effort? (p. 17).
HE concept of sustainable development was introduced
How can we solve social challenges, while avoiding
by the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, of the United Nations World Commission on Environment
society, enterprise, and user dynamics are all crucial in
(paragraph 27). Engineering is generally understood to be the designing, building and maintenance of structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes. In keeping with these two ontologies, sustainability
The transformative leadership role is best played by sustainability futures education whose mandate is to impart knowledge “to build better futures without lapsing
engineering involves the embedding of social, environmental,
into nightmares….engineering ethics and education
and economic considerations into in meeting human needs. A
that aimed to prepare engineers for acting on behalf of
further illumination of the range of sustainability dimensions
others” (p. 18). Among the corpus of knowledge for teaching
is given by Thomas Flüeler, David Goldblatt, Jürg Minsch and
sustainability engineering is Engineering a Better Future:
Daniel Spreng. In their book Meeting global energy challenges:
Interplay between Engineering, Social Sciences, and
Towards an agenda for social-science research, they state that
Innovation edited by Eswaran Subrahmanian, Toluwalogo
the focus should be “not only the triad of ecological, economic
Odumosu and Jeff rey Y. Tsao. Acknowledging that
and social but also temporal, spatial, technical, political and
engineering is a “social enterprise” (p. v), its scope includes
ethical” (p. 95).
designing the desired societal future (pp. 39-60), dealing
The epistemological aspects of this integrated approach are
with the future (pp.197-200), and integrating engineering
taken care of by numerous books, articles and other resources.
and social sciences (pp. 1-19); in addition to “education for
Here we examine a few pertinent works. An apt salvo is given
sustainability” (p. 2), and “the art of research (pp. 162-186).
by Erik van der Vleuten, Ruth Oldenziel and Mila Davids in
At the conceptual and design stage, “ visionary
their book Engineering the Future, Understanding the Past: A
scenarios are also created to explore how technology
Social History of Technology by posing two questions:
could improve current practice….[to] develop functional
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HUMAN FUTURES
