Second Nature | Engineering for a Sustainable Future
Engineering
Education for a Sustainable Future
Anthony D. Cortese,
ScD
Conference
on "Engineering Education and Training for Sustainable Development: Towards
Improved Performance"
Paris, France
September 24-26, 1997
Presented at the joint conference on "Engineering Education and Training
for Sustainable Development: Towards Improved Performance," sponsored by
World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO), United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP), World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
and Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chuassées (ENPC), and held at ENPC in
Paris, France, September 24-26, 1997.
Introduction
It is a great honor and privilege for me to participate in this important conference
on the education of engineers to help society move on a more sustainable path.
I wish to thank the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO), United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), World Business Council for Sustainable
Development (WBCSD) and Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chuassées (ENPC)
for organizing and sponsoring this conference and for inviting me to be involved.
I acknowledge with great enthusiasm and admiration the outstanding and relentless
leadership that my good friend and colleague, Madame Jacqueline Aloisi de Larderel,
UNEP-IE Director, has brought to the international movement for sustainable
development, particularly with business and education. I recall with great pleasure,
the first international conference on business education and the environment
that she initiated at INSEAD in October 1990 along with the Management Institute
for Environment and Business and Tufts University, where I was serving as Dean
of Environmental Programs.
The Need for a New Human Perspective
This conference comes at a critical time in the history of the sustainable development
movement and addresses one of its most significant issues changing the mindset
of society's leaders to move on a sustainable path. An unprecedented change
in mindset and, therefore, education is crucial to implementing all of
the recommendations and agreements of international bodies and individuals concerning
sustainable development. Moreover, the change must be accomplished in the next
two to four decades. In the last four decades, the population of the world has
more than doubled to 5.9 billion people and the worlds economic output has increased
fivefold.
This unprecedented growth is altering the face of the earth and the composition
of the atmosphere. Pollution of air and water, accumulation of wastes, destruction
of forests, erosion of soils, depletion of fisheries, and damage to the stratospheric
ozone layer threaten the survival of humans and thousands of other living species.
Humans are conducting an uncontrolled experiment unprecedented in scope and
scale that represents the reversal of natural evolution which produced clean
air and water and increasingly complex and diverse ecosystems -- systems which
made human evolution possible.
These changes, a result of unsustainable and inequitable patterns of production
and consumption, are likely to accelerate with the addition of 81 million people
to the planet each year. In Changing Course: A Global Business Perspective
on Development and the Environment, Stephan Schmidheiny, chairman
of the Business Council for Sustainable Development, points out that we are
a society living off its natural capital, not its income. We are acting like
a planet in liquidation. Schmidheiny calls this bad business.
Current strategies to meet human needs are not sustainable. Eighty percent of
the world's resources are being consumed by 20 percent of the world's population.
The world's poorest 20 percent earn 1.4 percent of the world's income. According
to the UN, the income ratio of the richest 20 percent to the poorest 20 percent
was 28:1 in 1960; it was 60:1 in 1990. For 30 percent of the world's population,
poor sanitation, malnutrition, and air pollution are still the major causes
of illness and death. The rural poor will increasingly migrate and be transformed
into an urban poor, and environmental health and social problems will multiply.
By the year 2005, for the first time in history, more people will live in
urban than in rural areas.
In the US, air pollution is believed to kill more people than automobile accidents
-- more than 60,000 premature deaths per year according to the EPA. By the time
population growth stabilizes in the next century, a 5- to 7-fold increase in
consumption of energy and goods will be needed just to raise the consumption
level in the developing world to that in the industrialized world. Agricultural
production must increase 3-fold in the next 40 years for all humans to have
adequate nutrition; we are already appropriating the most productive 40 percent
of the land-based biomass for human purposes. Simply to maintain the current
unhealthy levels of pollution and waste loadings will require an 80-90 percent
reduction in pollution generated per unit of economic output.
The world will need an unprecedented 2 billion jobs in the next 2030 years to
employ the current 800 million underemployed and unemployed people and the new
job seekers that will enter the market. This cannot be done with economic activity
that substitutes capital for labor (according to Paul Hawken from 19781990 in
the last twelve years the Fortune 500 companies have eliminated four million
jobs), consumes large amounts of materials and energy and creates large volumes
of pollution and waste, particularly when we have geometric growth in population.
Hawken points out that with a quintupling of population and increasing economic
output over 100-fold we have the reverse of the situation at the start of the
industrial revolution which was an abundance of natural resources and the ability
of the biosphere to assimilate wastes. "Our thinking is backwards: we shouldn't
use more of what we have less of (natural capital) to use less of what we have
more of (people)."
There is increasing social and political instability worldwide despite the end
of the Cold War and the increased globalization of the economy (which many argue
contributes to the instability). According to Worldwatch Institute there are
27 million environmental refugees, unprecedented migration of people from East
to West and South to North, 68 regional military conflicts, the UN has seen
its influence erode and their is increased isolationism on the part of major
powers such as the US.
As the astronauts said in "Apollo 13," "Houston, we have a problem!"
a societal problem caused by the "design" of an economic and social
system which lives off its support system in a degrading, unhealthful and unsustainable
manner. We will need a paradigm shift in the relationship of humans to the environment
and each other one in which humans live in harmony with both natural systems
and each other. We cannot achieve these results with our current thinking. A
psychologist friend once remarked that a definition of insanity is doing the
same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. As Einstein
observed, "the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same
level of thinking we were at when we created them." In the next 20 to 40
years, society must adopt new strategies that allow the needs of an expanding
population to be met in an environmentally sustainable and equitable manner.
We have known for quite some time that a healthy environment is essential to
human existence, health and well-being. Humans can live for about four minutes
without air, four days without water, and four weeks without food. Plants, animals,
and the habitats they occupy provide the food that sustains human life. The
earth and all its living organisms supply all raw materials for human activities.
All economic, social, and community systems derive resources from, and are a
part of, the biophysical system we call the biosphere. A recent study by Bob
Costanza, et al., of some of the essential ecological services provided by the
biosphere indicate their value of $33 trillion (range $16-$65) annually compared
to a worldwide human economy of $18 trillion. Indeed, economic activity is simply
the use of human ingenuity, technology and labor to convert natural and physical
resources into goods and services which have more human utilitarian value (in
the short run) than leaving them in their natural state. There is no inherent
conflict between protecting the environment and a strong human economy since
the environment is the support system for all human activity. As Peter Dunne
said in a New York Times editorial, "The environment is not a competing
interest; it is the playing field on which all other interests intersect."
Vision for a Just and Sustainable Future
A first step in the transition to a sustainable path is to shift from problem-solving
to creating. Problems are negative things which we would
like to eliminate. However, eliminating the problem does not necessarily get
us what we want. We often frame problems in such narrow ways that the solutions
are not lasting and may create other problems later on or in some other place.
The way we have dealt with most environmental issues such as air or water
pollution is to view them as discrete problems whose solutions end up often
moving pollution around rather than getting to the root of the problem and eliminating
it. Creating, on the other hand, is bringing into existence some thing
or situation that we want which is usually a much better motivator for change
than a problem we need to eliminate.
How do we create a life that allows all present and future humans to be healthy,
have their basic needs met, have fair and equitable access to the earth's resources,
have a decent quality of life and preserve the biologically diverse ecosystems
on which we all depend? Future scientists, engineers, and business people must
design technology and economic activities that sustain rather than degrade the
natural environment, enhance human health and well-being, and mirror and live
within the limits of natural systems.
The vision of a sustainable future is one in which:
- The world
population is stabilized at a level that is within the short and long
term carrying capacity of the earth's finite resources. This level is of great
debate and is probably between 8 and 9 billion people.
- Resources
are used efficiently. Leading organizations such as the Wuppertal Institute
and the Factor 10 Club and a growing number of individuals such as Ernst von
Weizsacker, Paul Hawken and Amory Lovins have been calling for a huge increase
in resource productivity by a factor of 410 in order to increase wealth
for 4/5 of the worlds population and to decrease environmental impact. This
is critical because the industrialized economy is incredibly wasteful in use
of resources while the planet has a finite amount of resources and a finite
ability to absorb and process wastes. According to a recent report of the
World Resources Institute, industrialized countries extract 4585 tons of materials
per person per year. A recent report of the US National Academy of Engineering
indicates 93 percent of all the material which enters into commerce becomes
waste before the product reaches the consumer. Paul Hawken estimates that
80 percent of the remaining 7 percent which is imbedded in the products goes
to waste within 6 weeks of use. Moreover, Hawken estimates that if one were
to include energy, water and biologically-based materials each person in the
US consumes their body weight in natural resources daily. For example, only
3 percent of the energy produced by a nuclear or coal-fired power plant to
power an incandescent light bulb actually results in light!
In their recently released book Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource
Use, Ernst von Weizsacker and Amory and Hunter Lovins call for a revolution
in energy and resource productivity and provide over 50 demonstrated examples
of factor 4 increases in energy, material and transportation productivity
from a variety of institutions around the world. With a few exceptions they
all cost less than conventional means of doing business and increased social
and economic as well as environmental sustainability.
One of my favorite
energy examples illustrates the possibilities and the challenges ahead. From
1973 to 1986, the US economy grew by 40 percent, yet energy consumption did
not increase. Higher prices in oil led to industrial conservation and government
efficiency standards for automobiles, refrigerators and electric motors. The
economy saved $160 billion a year. And there is still room for improvement.
Germany and Japan obtain twice as much economic output per unit of energy consumed
as the US and 1012 times as much as China. Since 1986 the price of oil has fallen
to an historical low due to the success of conservation. As a result, in the
US, the size (witness the growth in gas guzzling sport/utility vehicles which
now make up 45 percent of new car sales) and number of automobiles and the number
of miles driven has continued to grow, driving energy consumption up steadily
each year. The US now imports more oil just for gasoline than the total
amount of oil imported during the 1973 oil crisis.
- We will mirror
and live within natural systems. Humans are the only species on earth
that produce waste which is not a raw material or nutrient for another species.
Also, we are the only species to produce wastes that can be broadly toxic
and build up for long periods of time. As Bill McDonough, Dean of the University
of Virginia School of Agriculture, has said a sustainable society would eliminate
the concept of waste. Waste is not simply an unwanted and sometimes harmful
byproduct of life; it is a raw material out of place. Waste and pollution
demonstrate gross inefficiency in the economic system since they represent
resources that are no longer available for use and/or create harm in humans
and other species.
A sustainable economy would mirror nature's "circular" method of
using matter and employ the concepts of design through which all waste would
be the "food" (waste=food) for another activity. This idea
is illustrated in the concept of industrial ecology. Metal extraction
and conversion would be replaced by strategies to continuously cycle existing
metals through the economy. For example, recycling aluminum rather than using
virgin bauxite ore cuts energy use by 95 percent and pollution by 99 percent.
When we recycle paper, we cut energy consumption by 4050 percent and air and
water pollution by about 35 percent, while employing more people.
- We will use
renewable resources at a rate less than or equal to the natural environment's
ability to regenerate the resource. This means living off the income,
not the capital, e.g., practicing sustainable forestry, sustainable fishing
and sustainable agriculture. Every ton of paper made of recycled fiber saves
17 trees and cuts air and water pollution 3050 percent. Organic farming and
agricultural production which minimize the use of pesticides and fertilizers
while conserving soil and water are safer and more sustainable.
- We will rely
directly on solar energy to drive our economic system. Over 85 percent
of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels. This form of energy use causes
major environmental and health problems such as black lung disease, air pollution,
acid rain, oil spills and global climate change, to name a few. The desire
for a continuing "cheap" supply of fossil fuels has had enormous
military and economic costs to keep the oil and gas flowing around the world,
especially from the Middle East. Moreover, this fossil fuel dependence is
economically unsustainable for more than a few decades it took 10,000 days
for nature to create the fossil fuels that society consumes in one day!
- We will increase
production of durable, repairable goods and eliminate persistent, toxic and
bioaccumulative substances. At the same time, we will eliminate
disposable goods as much as possible and detoxify the production process by
minimizing the use and discharge of toxic substances. Products would be designed
for disassembly so that the materials could be utilized in making new products.
For example, several manufacturers (Volkswagen, Volvo, BMW) are redesigning
automobiles so that 90 percent or more of the materials can be recycled into
new automobiles. In 1993, the Gillette Company, one of the world's leading
manufacturers of shaving equipment, had reduced its Toxic Release Inventory
(US EPA definition) wastes in the US by 97 percent from their 1987 level.
According to Factor Four, between 1981 and 1993, Dow Chemicals Louisiana Division
with 2,400 workers implemented 1,000 projects (costing under $200,000) to
save energy or reduce waste. For the 575 projects subsequently audited, the
average annual return on investment was 204 percent and the annual savings
was $110 million!
- We will focus
on providing the ultimate ends of products or services not the products or
services themselves. German chemist Michael Braungart and Bill McDonough
have invented the concept of "products of service." A key to resource
efficiency is to understand products as a means to deliver a service
to a customer. For example, people do not want energy, they want the service
it provides such as heat or light. Similarly, people want access to people,
places, things and experiences not necessarily increased transportation. An
example of a company that has adopted this idea is Interface, the largest
commercial carpet tile company in the world which now leases carpet
through its "Evergreen Lease." The lessee gets the service of the
product, warmth softness, acoustic value, and aesthetics for a fee. When the
carpet is worn out, Interface takes it back and recycles it into new carpet.
- All people
will understand their connection to the natural world and to other humans.
They will understand their "ecological footprint," i.e., they will
know where products and services come from, where wastes go, and what they
do to humans and other living species. They will appreciate that driving a
car in Ohio may cause flooding in Bangladesh through global warming, or that
cutting down forests in Brazil may deprive someone in Hungary of a lifesaving
drug. For all people (led by professionals such as engineers) minimizing their
ecological footprint and "walking lightly" on the planet will be
"second nature."
- All current
and future generations of humans will be able to meet their basic needs, pursue
meaningful work and have the opportunity to realize their full human potential
personally and socially. The average American receives 3,000 advertising
messages per day oriented toward consumption. The American public is often
portrayed as a group of consumers, not citizens. But increased consumption
and material acquisition alone has not led to a happier, safer and more secure
population in the US, nor has it done so elsewhere.
This June, the prestigious Councils of the Royal Society of London and the
United States National Academy of Sciences issued a statement calling for
an urgent need for better understanding of human consumption and related behaviors
and technologies, so that effective action may be taken to expedite the transition
to a sustainable, desirable life for the world's people in the coming century.
In the statement they said, "It has often been assumed that population
growth is the dominant problem we face. But what matters is not only the present
and future number of people in the world, but also how poor or affluent they
are, how much natural resource they utilize, and how much pollution and waste
they generate. We must tackle population and consumption together." Sufficiency
of resource use and accumulation is as important as resource efficiency
and productivity. Beyond meeting basic needs, we must examine non-material
ways to fulfill our needs for security, belonging, personal development
and happiness that transcend materialism -- a goal of most major spiritual
and religious movements.
- We will have
timely economic and social signals that encourage environmentally and socially
sustainable behavior. The economic measures of success we use today, such
as the GNP and consumer price index, discourage conservation and encourage
waste, consumption, and the substitution of capital for jobs. The price of
goods services reflects all the profits to the producers but does not include
all the social, environmental and health costs to society. In a sustainable
society we would have more development, i.e., qualitative improvement
in people and value added to resource use than quantitative growth
in resource and energy intensive economies. Several national and international
organizations and thousands of individuals have called for full cost (including
social and environmental) accounting for economic activities, development
of macroeconomic indicators which truly reflect societal well-being (e.g.,
Index for Sustainable Economic Welfare) and taxation which taxes the undesirables
(energy and resource consumption) and not the desirable (employment and investment).
- Nations would
act like a Global Family. We must change the relationship between the
developed and the developing countries. Industrial countries must reduce their
consumption of the world's resources in the face of the desperate need of
developing countries to improve health and to reduce poverty, social instability
and population growth. A child born in the US today will consume as much of
the earth's resources and produce as much waste as more than 100 Bangladeshi
children. We also need new approaches for transferring technology, for training
and education, and for providing financial assistance to developing countries.
These approaches must address population stabilization, improving the educational
and social status of women, the international debt problem, and the need for
sustainable economic strategies.
The Role of Higher
Education
Such a shift in the thinking, values, and actions of all individuals and institutions
worldwide calls for a long term societal effort to make environmental and sustainability
concerns a central theme in all education, particularly for engineers, economists
and business people. If we are to achieve a sustainable future, institutions of
higher education must provide the awareness, knowledge, skills, and values that
equip individuals to pursue life goals in a manner that sustains human and non-human
well-being. This is critical since higher education prepares most of the professionals
who develop, manage, teach in and influence society's institutions.
Higher education institutions bear a profound moral responsibility to increase
the awareness, knowledge, skills and values needed to create a just and sustainable
future. Society has conveyed a special charter on institutions of higher learning.
Within the United States, they are allowed academic freedom and a tax-free status
to receive public and private resources in exchange for their contribution to
the health and well-being of society through the creation and dissemination of
knowledge and values. These institutions have the mandate and potential to develop
the intellectual and conceptual framework for achieving this goal. They must play
a strong role in education, research, policy development, information exchange
and community outreach and support. Higher education in the United States are
significant but largely overlooked leverage points in the transition to a sustainable
world -- they influence future leaders through their students and current leaders
through their alumni. They have the unique freedom to develop new ideas, comment
on society, engage in bold experimentation, as well as contribute to the creation
of new knowledge.
Several prominent engineering schools are making important strides such as Georgia
Tech with its plan to convert to solar power within 20 years and MIT with
its Program in Environmental Education and Research (PEER). And there is some
excellent leadership by professional organizations such as the WFEO and the WBCSD
to make sustainable development a high priority in engineering and business education.
Despite these efforts and those of a number of colleges and universities which
have active environmental studies programs and train graduate professionals,
education and research about the interdependence of and a sustainable relationship
between humans and the rest of the environment is not a priority in higher education.
As David Orr has said, "The crisis of humanity and the biosphere is a crisis
of mind, perception and heart. It is not a problem in education it is a problem
of education." To date, no engineering school in the US (or, to my
knowledge, internationally) has made design for the environment, industrial ecology,
pollution prevention or the relationship of technological development to sustainability
the cornerstone of engineering education.
American medical students receive the equivalent of one day's training in occupational
and environmental medicine in four years of medical school. Only 100 out of 700
schools of business and management in the US. have courses on business and the
environment; the majority of the courses are electives. Only 9 percent of teachers'
colleges require a practicum in environmental education at the elementary level,
and only 7 percent at the secondary level.
As a result, the general public has little awareness that a healthy natural environment
is essential to our very existence. We see ourselves as separate from the natural
world and are unaware that it provides all the resources which make life possible
while absorbing our wastes and enriching our lives with its incredible diversity
of plants, animals and other species. Much of the population has little idea about
where goods come from and where they go and the destructive impact of pollution
on human health. We believe that natural and physical resources are free and inexhaustible
and that the environment can assimilate all our pollution and waste. The general
public has little idea that it is not just industrial enterprise, but the aggregate
of all human activities -- all the individual and the collective daily decisions
that are irreversibly changing the earth.
A fundamental problem in current education (and in many other sectors) is the
underlying assumption that environmental protection should be left to environmental
professionals such as environmental engineers. This results in educational systems
treating environmental education as yet another specialty, not unlike sociology
or biology. But environmental specialists alone will not help us move toward a
sustainable path. All humans consume resources, occupy ecosystems and produce
waste. We need all professionals to carry out their lives and activities
in a manner that is environmentally sound and sustainable. In addition, the current
education and training of most environmental professionals who will be employed
by government, industry, academia and environmental organizations is narrowly
focused and incomplete. Most of these professionals are trained in dealing with
a subset of environmental problems such as air pollution, water pollution, or
hazardous waste, but are not trained to deal with environmental issues in an integrated
and comprehensive fashion. The focus of training is on controlling pollution and
waste once created and in remediating environmental damage, rather than reducing
or eliminating pollution and waste generation at the source.
Several structural aspects of the educational system contribute to the problem.
Interactions between population, human activities and the environment, and strategies,
technologies and policies for an environmentally just and sustainable future are
amongst the most complex issues with which society must deal. These issues cross
disciplinary boundaries, making it very difficult to convene the skills necessary
for effective teaching and research in educational institutions that are organized
into highly specialized areas of knowledge and traditional disciplines. Specialists
are produced with little feeling of connectedness, and little understanding of
the workings of natural systems, or even the place of their own discipline in
the larger human and non-human world. Interconnecting patterns and relationships
which govern all natural and most human interactions are largely left to the student
to discern on his or her own. For example, neoclassical economics views the economic
system as separate from the biosphere rather than one of its subsystems. As Herman
Daly states "Neoclassical economists look at the relationship between the
economy and the biosphere like physicians who view a human body as having only
a circulatory system and no digestive tract. Engineers believe that most human
based technology is an improvement over natural technology" and feed economists'
assumptions that science and technology can substitute for any resource we deplete
or species or ecosystem we destroy. In Earth in the Balance, Vice President
Al Gore argues that "we organize our knowledge of the natural world into
smaller and smaller segments and assume that the connections between these separate
compartments aren't really important... (On the other hand) the ecological perspective
begins with the view of the whole, an understanding of how the various parts of
nature (including humans) interact in patterns that tend toward balance and persist
over time."
Curriculum and degree requirements are primarily determined by faculty isolated
by department and school of study, and/or designed to satisfy accrediting agencies
rather than generating students with skills relevant to society's needs. Learning
is fragmented, and faculty, responding to long-established incentives and professional
practices, are discouraged from extending their work into other disciplines or
inviting interdisciplinary collaboration. Tenure and promotion of faculty are
largely based on teaching and research, which is most often in a single discipline.
Quality scholarship is usually considered as synonymous with originality in a
single discipline, and individual contribution is often encouraged over team efforts.
It is extremely difficult to obtain tenure as an interdisciplinary scholar (often
not considered a rigorous scholar, by definition) in the overwhelming majority
of institutions of higher education. Indeed as many have quipped, God probably
would never have received tenure at any major university for several reasons:
He had only one
major publication
It was in Hebrew
It had no references
It wasn't published in a refereed journal
Some doubt He wrote it Himself
He may have created the world, but what has He done since?
The scientific community can't replicate His results
He never got permission from the ethics board to use human species
When one experiment went awry, He tried to cover it up by drowning all the subjects
He rarely came to class and just told the students, "Read the Book"
Some say He had His son teach the class
He expelled His first two students
His office hours were irregular and were sometimes held on a mountain top
Although there were only ten requirements, most students failed
Future Direction
for Higher Education
As Chet Bowers and others have pointed out, universities have departments while
society has complex problems. Designing a sustainable future requires a paradigm
shift toward a systemic perspective which encompasses the complex interdependence
of individual, social, cultural, economic and political activities and the biosphere.
This will require comprehensive short- and long-term educational change necessitating
unprecedented leadership and commitment by colleges, universities and professional
schools, especially engineering schools. (See attached tables on Learning Orientation)
These strategies are outlined in detail in a 1995 report to the US President's
Council on Sustainable Development entitled Workshop on the Principles of Sustainability
in Higher Education. The workshop included 35 international academic experts on
sustainability and education.
The content of learning must embrace an interdisciplinary, systemic
approach to address environmentally sustainable development on local, regional
and global scales over short-, medium- and inter-generational time periods.
The context of learning must change to make the human/environment interdependence
an integral part of the normal teaching in all the disciplines rather than
isolated as a special course or module in a program for environmental specialists
only. Because the environment provides the basis for life and is a major determinant
of the quality of life, it must be a fully integrated and prominent part of all
education. All students must understand that we are an integral part of nature
and that we are coevolving with all the other species in the biosphere. All
engineers must learn a number of concepts and skills that I never obtained in
engineering school such as:
- systems thinking
- how the natural
world (including humans) evolved and works
- the interdependence
of humans and the environment, including the relationship of population, consumption,
culture, social equity, health and the environment
- how to assess
and minimize the ecological footprint of human economic activity
- technical, design,
scientific and institutional strategies and techniques that foster sustainable
development, promote energy and natural resource efficiency and conservation,
mirror natural system resource use and cycling, remediate environmental problems,
and preserve biological diversity
- social, cultural,
legal, market and governmental frameworks for guiding sustainable development
- strategies to
motivate environmentally just and sustainable behavior by individuals and
institutions
Research must
lead to the development of economic strategies and technologies that are highly
energy and resource efficient, that mirror and live within the limits of natural
systems, and minimize pollution and waste production. Higher education must help
in the establishment of an ethos to stabilize population, assure the just distribution
of the world's limited resources and promote social and economic values and policies
that lead to a healthy and sustainable future.
The process of education must emphasize active, experiential learning and
real-world problem solving on the campus and in the larger community. Educational
psychologists tell us that we retain 80 percent of what we do as opposed to 1020
percent of what we hear and read. For example:
- using the campus
as a laboratory for environmental management and sustainability
- confronting
actual, real-world problems
- internships
in government, industry, communities, K-12 schools and NGOs
- capstone courses
oriented toward solving environment and development problems of communities,
government and industry
- finding opportunities
and giving credit for off-campus work in communities
- encouraging
students to work in groups so that they will be able to effectively collaborate
as future managers and leaders
Higher education must
"practice what it preaches" and make sustainability an integral
part of the operations, purchasing and investments of higher education
institutions. The university is a microcosm of the larger community, and the manner
in which it carries out its daily activities is an important demonstration of
ways to achieve environmentally responsible living. By focusing on itself, the
university can engage students in understanding the "institutional metabolism"
and ecological footprint of materials and activities. Students can be made aware
of their "ecological address" and the impact of their attending school
on the natural environment and the community, and they can be actively engaged
in the practice of environmentally sustainable living. Engaging in environmentally
just and sustainable practices in its operations, purchasing and investments,
higher education helps reinforce desired values and behaviors in all members of
the academic community. Moreover, the annual buying and investment power of the
US institutions of higher learning ($165 billion in purchasing; $85 billion in
endowment) make them important players in creating market demand for environmentally
just and sustainable goods and services and in supporting the local communities
in which these institutions are located.
Making the Transition Through Higher Education
Many people (including yours truly) believe that society has 2040 years to make
the transition to a sustainable path. Unfortunately, higher education is not likely
to change its direction far enough or fast enough without strong outside influence.
Historically, this is due to the isolation of higher education from many of
society's problems, the overwhelming dominance of the disciplinary approach in
learning and research and the tendency to be "producer" driven rather
than "customer" driven. In Universities and the Future of America,
former Harvard president Derek Bok opines, "When society recognizes a need
that can be satisfied through advanced education or research and when sufficient
funds are available to pay the cost, American universities respond in exemplary
fashion... On the other hand, when social needs are not clearly recognized and
backed by adequate financial support, higher education has often failed to respond
as effectively as it might, even to some of the most important challenges facing
America... After a major social problem has been recognized, universities will
usually continue to respond weakly unless outside support is available and the
subjects involved command prestige in academic circles."
Strong, rapid and largely unprecedented efforts by all of higher education's stakeholders
are necessary to motivate the system on a path to sustainability. Students,
parents, alumnae, prospective employers, organizations funding research and education
(government, industry and foundations), accrediting organizations and the public
are all consumers, clients or supporters of higher education's services.
If we are to encourage the educational system to produce the environmentally aware
professionals and specialists needed to lead us on a sustainable path, all
stakeholders must work with the higher education system in creative ways to
encourage environmental education and research. For example, there is a growing
student demand at colleges and universities in the US and internationally for
environmental education and for the institutions to reduce the environmental impact
of their own operations.
This effort must be encouraged and expanded. For example, the US government, which
provides over 90 percent of the funding for academic research, could gradually
move this research budget over the next two decades toward activities which are
environmentally, economically and socially just and sustainable. Both directly
and through their hiring practices, prospective employers could expand efforts
to communicate with higher education about the need for both environmental specialists
and environmentally literate and responsible graduates in all fields. Environmental
education could be encouraged or required at the state and local level and encouraged
by accrediting organizations. These steps would encourage faculty to make environmental
concerns central to their teaching.
Recognizing the need to assist higher education in making this transition, a small
group of us led by US Senator John Kerry established Second Nature,
a nonprofit organization located in Boston. Its sole purpose is to increase the
capacity of higher education to make justice and sustainability "second nature"
in its learning, research, operations and community outreach. In its three years
of existence, it has provided technical assistance, educational materials and
helped train over 700 faculty and staff and between 25-30,000 students in 25 universities
across the US. Its co-located sister organization, the Consortium for Environmental
Education in Medicine (CEEM) is providing similar services to medical schools
in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Texas. We and four other sister organizations
-- World Resources Institute's Management Institute for Environment and Business,
Center for Respect of Life and Environment, National Wildlife Campus Ecology Program
and Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future -- have formed
an Alliance for Sustainability Through Higher Education to expand our scope and
effectiveness to promote education for sustainability.
These efforts are important but represent a tiny fraction of the effort that is
needed to move higher education and society on a just and sustainable path. As
we focus on strategies for educational reform we must remember that a sustainable
relationship with our life support system is the sine qua non of a successful
effort. Active partnerships between the higher education system, the private sector,
communities and state and federal governments are urgently needed to accelerate
this effort as we approach the 21st century. This conference is another important
step for the future of engineering education. I applaud you in this effort and
pledge to work with you in expanding and accelerating creative ways to help engineering
education move in a direction which is critical to the future of humanity.
I wish to acknowledge the contribution of the work of the following colleagues
and mentors to my work and this speech: Robert Ayres, Thomas Berry, Michael Braungart,
Chet Bowers, Lester Brown, Robert Costanza, Herman Daly, Jacqueline Aloisi de
Larderel, Claude Fussler, Tom Gladwin, Paul Hawken, Tom Lovejoy, Amory Lovins,
Dana and Dennis Meadows, Bill McDonough, David Orr, Karl-Henrik Robert and Ernst
von Weizsäcker. I also wish to acknowledge the assistance of Mark Rielly
at Second Nature for assistance in research for this speech.
Dr. Anthony D. Cortese is President of Second Nature and was formerly the Tufts
University Dean of Environmental Programs and Commissioner of the Massachusetts
Department of Environmental Protection.
.
Learning Orientation
for Justice and Sustainability
.
Intellectual Direction
.
|
Current
|
Future
|
| Disciplinary |
Multidisciplinary
and interdisciplinary |
| Compartmentalized |
Systems |
| Reductionist |
Holistic |
| Current
generation |
Global
scale |
| Short
term |
Intergenerational |
| Humans
separate from nature and dominant species |
Humans
part of and living in harmony with nature |
| Learning
from humans only |
Learning
from humans and other species |
| Environment
as special topic or discipline |
Human/environment
relationship part of all learning |
.
Social Direction
.
|
Current
|
Future
|
| Economy
and technology prime goals |
Equity,
justice, cultural and environmental sustainability prime goals of economy |
| Individual
development central goal |
Individual
and community development central goal |
| Scientific
certainty as basis for decision making |
Precautionary
principle as basis for decision making |
| Growth:
quantitative change as measure of success |
Development:
qualitative change as measure of success |
| Technology
to use and dominate nature |
Technology
to mimic and live within nature |
.
Values
.
|
Current
|
Future
|
| Values
and ethics as separate disciplines |
Values
and ethics as part of all learning |
| Meeting
material needs and wants central goal |
Meeting
non-material and material needs central goal |
.
Learning Process
.
|
Current
|
Future
|
| Classroom
learning predominant |
Experiential
and community service learning balanced with classroom |
| Campus
operations and investments based on conventional economic thinking |
Campus
operations and investments to practice sustainability |
| Campus
operations disconnected from formal learning |
Campus
operations connected with formal learning and student/faculty action for
sustainability |