Professor Jerome Hajjar writes in his informative editorial in March 2024 STRUCTURE magazine, “Leading the Way in Sustainability and Resilience in Structural Engineering:” “It is my hope that sustainability and resilience become premier design objectives within our profession” and that it “will require an evolving mindset within the profession and the public.” He calls on each structural engineer to “take steps to accelerate this transformation through continuing to learn about and adopt structural systems and practices that are more sustainable and resilient and advocating for these designs within the profession and to the public.”
Prof. Hajjar’s commendable call to structural engineers to lead the way in sustainability and resilience in structural engineering, I believe, should extend to all engineers to lead the way in social equity and environmental sustainability in the global economy.
Our current design objectives Prof. Hajjar mentions are “safety, serviceability, constructability, aesthetics, and economy.” These objectives, with the exception of perhaps aesthetics, are in various codes and standards developed by engineers working with owners, architects, academia, industry, and regulatory officials. In the U.S., the codes and standards are arrived at by a consensus process that has evolved over a century of American experience of regulating buildings and other structures.
As I wrote in an April 2015 article in STRUCTURE magazine, “The engineering (and architecture) profession has a compelling story to tell about how we have successfully avoided going to the federal government to regulate safety in buildings. There is no giant Department of Buildings in Washington, DC, or even in most state capitals. Buildings, even big buildings, are generally regulated at the local level, by small departments in each town or city who enforce a uniform building code developed within an open and democratic consensus process. This system evolved strictly in the American domestic politics arena, untouched by the events that tended to centralize power at the national level. This is a success story worth touting for the benefit of other professions.”
The Hajjar editorial is an excellent starting point for not merely structural engineers in the U.S., but all engineers in our global engineering profession, to work together in a similar global consensus process to define and implement in the global economy the twin premier design objectives of social equity and environmental sustainability.
The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement (PCA) was signed with much fanfare on Earth Day in 2016 by over 200 nations. The PCA was brokered by global scientists working in a consensus process at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The UN IPCC consensus process for approval of IPCC’s documents is very rigorous—it’s almost a line-by-line consensus approval by all national representatives at the UN.
However, during the past eight years the calls from IPCC for global action on adaptation and mitigation has not resulted in a plan of action for reaching the PCA goal of net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emission by 2050. A deep-seated pessimism is evident in the concluding remarks of IPCC chair during the opening of the March 2024 Copenhagen climate ministerial meeting:
“To sum up, the scale and pace of climate change poses unprecedented challenges for humanity. But IPCC’s recent work has shown that we have the means and the tools to address these challenges, if we choose to use them. And just to say, the newly elected scientific leadership of IPCC stands ready to play its part in supporting a move from problems to solutions, from analysis to action.”
It is likely we missed the date of 2050 for net-zero GHG emission; it is now time for the next step from analysis to action—developing and implementing a plan of action—that’s the role of engineers.
The success of the IPCC consensus process to deal with highly scientific and technological issues in a global political setting has made the IPCC process a model to follow in other such issues at the UN. Similarly, to implement the PCA it is necessary for global engineers to create a global consensus process to develop and implement a plan of action for the global economy to become socially equitable and environmentally sustainable by a certain date. This global consensus process for engineers may be modeled along the lines of the consensus process engineers use to develop and implement the American building codes and standards for safety, serviceability, constructability, and economy.
The first step the engineering profession needs to take for the net-zero transformation of the global economy is to seek consensus of the civil society on the proper purpose of engineering within this long-established consensus process. In his editorial in January 2013 STRUCTURE magazine [The Proper Purpose of Engineering], Jon Schmidt explained “engineers ought to work toward the material well-being of all people, not just a privileged group.” The global economy today is not only in need of becoming net-zero carbon, but it also needs to become socially equitable to assure material well-being of all 8 billion people in the global economy. Social equity in the global economy is measured by equitable access for all humans to the following eight material benefits of the global economy: clean air, clean water, nutritious food, shelter, clean energy, health, education, and transportation. It is the role of engineers in the global economy to define and deliver the infrastructure for each material benefit.
In addition to climate change, scientists point out that for long-term habitability eight other critical biospheric boundaries should be accounted for: ocean acidification, depletion of stratospheric ozone, atmospheric aerosols, interference in nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, freshwater use, land use changes, biodiversity loss, and various forms of chemical pollution.
To achieve these additional premier design objectives, a new engineering framework is required. Further, these objectives should not only be led by scientists. To quote Henry Petroski “science is about knowing; engineering is about doing.” The lack of participation of engineers in leadership in the ongoing global initiatives on climate and economic development is a primary reason for lack of action. Engineers need to get involved to take steps in a global consensus process to accelerate the transformation of global economy to become socially equitable and environmentally sustainable. ■
About the Author
Ashvin A. Shah, PE, F.ASCE is a retired professional engineer in Scarsdale, New York. Prior to retirement he was on the technical staff of ASCE from 1990 to 1996 managing ASCE’s Codes and Standards program and then as a consultant from 1996 to 2000.
References
1. Leading the Way in Sustainability and Resilience in Structural Engineering, Jerome F. Hajjar, Structure magazine, March 2024.
2. The Role of Engineers in Transforming the Global Economy, Ashvin A. Shah, Structure magazine, April 2015.
3. The UN IPCC chair’s remark during the opening of the March 2024 Copenhagen climate ministerial meeting
4. The Proper Purpose of Engineering, Jonathan Schmidt, Structure magazine, January 2013.
5. Pages 168 – 169, How the World Really Works – The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’e Going, Vaclav Smil, 2022.
6. Page 17, The Essential Engineer – Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems, Henry Petroski, 2010.