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Under-Ground Water Pollution – one of the Greatest Threats to Humanity .............. 2 How to conserve Water and Use It Effectively ... 2-5 Outcomes of the World Congress on Engineering Education ..... 7 India hosts the General Assembly of FEISCA at Chandigarh during April 8-9, 2006 ..... 7 We look forward to WEC 2008 ....... 8
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Announcement : WEC
Forthcoming Conference Committee
Editorial
POVERTY ERADICATION The problem coined as brain drain(also called human capital fight) has been one of the most controversial for the last decades, particularly between those who strongly value individual freedom, migration mobility, and the relevance of money flows, and those who give preference to cultural belonging and the encouragement of the most dynamic sectors to stay in their own countries to promote social solidarity and the equitable and integral development of their backward countries. Should we appreciate, take care and protect as our homeland the place where we have our family and friends of our youth, where we study and develop our personalities? Are we ourselves satisfied when we contribute to improve the aspirations, possibilities and realities of this own environment with our cultural, personal and productive knowledge and training or should we be inclined to prefer and adopt the scenario that offers us better chances of individual development and comforts for our adult lives? Should we emigrate and begin a new life in a different and foreign country? Nowadays this conflict gains a very particular significance since it is related to the debate on how to overcome extreme poverty and inequalities. While the Nations Community proclaims the urgent need of promoting "sustainable development" (1992, Rio World Summit) and, especially after Rio, the eradication of poverty, this problem – according to UNO itself – has considerably become worse during the last decade (Report on the World Summit 2005) even though, at the beginning of this new millennium, the heads of states and representatives of 189 nations in a meeting in UN Headquarters in New York unanimously approved a declaration entitled "Millennium Development Goals" (Millennium Declaration) in which they commit themselves to reduce significantly by 2015 the world poverty and its related diseases: illiteracy, hunger, discrimination, insalubrity, lack of drinking water, epidemics, environmental degradation, etc. This commitment was supported and expanded in the "World Summit on Sustainable Development" (Johannesburg, 2002) whose declaration reaffirmed the following concepts: "Eradicating poverty is the greatest global challenge facing the world today and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development, particularly for developing countries." But, how can poverty and inequalities be overcome, particularly in underdeveloped countries? How to promote their own sustainable development? How to put into practice the compliance of so many declarations and plans? As a conclusion it seems clear that, in the United Nations and in many international scenarios, they all agree that the world should make a great effort to reduce gradually the enormous inequalities and the current extreme and majority poverty, and that this requires the promotion of an intensive sustainable development process in the less developed countries. To carry out a true sustainable process, it should be developed in each country according to its individual and authentic features, supported by a growing number of highly qualified people, especially in fields such as education, health, engineering and technology. However, the reality is quite different: the gap between the rich and the poor, countries or social sectors within the same country, is becoming wider, and many of the most talented individuals who could promote and strengthen the development in their own backward countries decide to move abroad, to industrialized countries which offer more appealing economic conditions and professional opportunities. How to face this problem of migration of talented individuals and intermediate sectors that have been trained in their own developing countries and then end up making their productive contributions to the most developed ones? Are money flows that maintain and worsen the ills affecting our unstable present times more important, or should we all, especially the richest countries, do the best to build a more equitable future world-wide?
B J Vasoya Chairman-CEE
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