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Energy Management on a Global Perspective........ 2-4 Engineering and technology for better poverty reduction?... 5 CEE Meeting FIESCA Gen Assembly & India Hosts - 2007 WFEO General Assembly......... 7 We look forward to WEC 2008....... 8
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Announcement : WEC
Forthcoming Conference Committee
What else can engineering and technology do to contribute better to poverty reduction? To improve our contributions to reduce poverty, we, engineers, should be increasingly aware of the significance and importance of the topic and of how it is being dealt with globally and from the engineering institutions We may thus enhance the traditional contributions of engineering to the general well-being with the explicit consideration of poverty. To move forwards in this direction, engineers, besides participating in the generation of innovations and productive investments, infrastructure and mass production of goods and services, should systematically collaborate to promote development in a more equitable way, supporting, multiplying and intensifying programs of social development. In many countries, professional groups are leading them in search of better alternatives to contribute to improve every day life and the possible progress of poor people, to create favorable conditions for their education and adaptation to new types of work and production. Moreover, it is necessary that we devote part of our lime, when we plan and carry out our projects and works, to analyze if they contribute to distribute wealth better, if they help to improve the well being, and if they encourage integration and development of the poorest and must deprived communities, reducing the social and territorial segregation. We know that education; health and work are three essential elements to overcome limitations. If we want that all human beings can attain these basic pillars, we should strive ourselves to carry out actions and to create organizations and works so that the deprived ones due to isolation and segregation can be integrated into an active and productive world and can build or reinforce their self-esteem and confidence. To achieve this, besides the continuous analysis of the topic of feasibility and impact (environmental and social) assessment, engineers should suggest improving our capabilities of interdisciplinary cooperation and our participation and the promotion of Joint actions of the private sector, business organizations, governmental agencies and the interested people and future beneficiaries, to carry out projects so as to contribute to solve – or, at least, not to worsen- isolation and deprivation problems in certain regions. In order to help to overcome isolation and poverty cases, it is also
important, to take particular actions, to consult from the very
beginning the participating communities and work with them in
the design and execution of programs to enable the provision to
these marginal areas of telecommunication and transportation
means, energy and water, economical housing, as contributions
of infrastructure and essential services. It is thus possible to meet
urgent needs and to promote processes of awareness and selfassistance
which, identifying educational and production potentials,
encourage the establishment and progress of poor agricultural
communities and peripherally urban areas, their development,
the generation of small-sized enterprises and the commercialization
of their products and the creation of jobs, All these will allow them
to live with dignity, developing and enhancing their ambitions and
possibilities to become a member of the more active sectors or
to take part of a larger socio-economic structure such as a
cooperative or a corporation. With these activities, regional
processes of transformations can be spread out and much more
people can gradually yet involved, led by the example of what
has been done, with the aid of the committed altitude and capacities of engineers to he job creators for everyone instead of job seekers
for themselves.
In these senses, much can be done, beginning with the need that,
together with other specialists with similar motivations, engineers
living in underdeveloped regions do not search for a future abroad,
in the most developed countries, but stay and get trained to work
in their environments and make up their minds to channel aids
and to collaborate with the efforts to help the most deprived people
of their areas. Feeling a strong commitment towards them,
engineers can help them to enter into a productive life; technicians
should think about the most accessible devices and production,
construction and transport systems for the poorest and planners
should observe the development of infrastructures and services
which favor the integration of marginal people, not only led by the
immediate economic profit but also by the social benefit which
can decisively contribute to the betterment and the sustainable
development of the whole group, making and reinforcing shared
efforts for the good of all, the culture of work and a creative and
optimist community synergy offering the poor encouraging
prospects for a future in their own region, strengthening there
their own ideas and identity.
To us, engineers and technicians, recognizing our mission and
recovering a favorable global consideration have not been easy;
from a period in which our relevant works were celebrated and
praised and we were only asked for technical quality, scientific
rigor, functionality and some economy, beauty and comfort, we
passed through the seventies, a decade in which we were
responsible (and we have taken the responsibility) for the
compliance of all these (and we are doing it) and for the observance
of the urgent need of not only producing harmful effects but also
of protecting and even improving the physical (natural and artificial)
environment, conserving it to support future generations. The
process has spread over the nineties, and at the beginning of the
new millennium, it stated the social responsibility of contributing
to the eradication of poverty a social responsibility, which directly
challenges our profession since it is a transformer of the physical
environment and of organization and production methods.
It is therefore a vast task that has been gradually increased with
many additions facing our professional perspective. We must now
become aware of that and evaluate up to which extent we should
take on that task, sharing it with members of other representative
social sectors in an interdisciplinary dialogue, up to which extent
we can and should commit ourselves to fully include in our
professional responsibility the problems as regards environmental
protection and poverty eradication.
We obviously know that we cannot consider all the environmental,
economic, social and cultural problems and that their solutions
are not only technical; but we may understand and evaluate how
we can collaborate with them, providing our up-dated engineering
knowledge, and how we should develop attitudes to decisively
lead us to share the international movement to combat poverty
and, consequently, to contribute to create a future and an embracing
society of knowledge and solidarity. With this perspective, we
should ask ourselves if engineering traditional dynamics and
creativity are still alive in us and if they can grow so as to take on
such hard challenges.
Contributed by Engr Conrado E. Bauer
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