Engineering: issues, challenges and opportunities for development

Abstract

The critical roles of engineering in addressing the large-scale pressing challenges facing our societies worldwide are widely recognized. Such large-scale challenges include access to affordable health care; tackling the coupled issues of energy, transportation and climate change; providing more equitable access to information for our populations; clean drinking water; natural and man-made disaster mitigation, environmental protection and natural resource management, among numerous others. As such, mobilizing the engineering community to become more eff ective in delivering real products and services of benefit to society, especially in the developing world, is a vitally important international responsibility. Engineering as a human endeavour is also facing numerous additional challenges of its own, including attracting and retaining broader cross-sections of our youth, particularly women; strengthening the educational enterprise; forging more effective interdisciplinary alliances with the natural and social sciences and the arts; enhancing our focus on innovation, entrepreneurship and job creation, and; promoting increased public awareness and support for the engineering enterprise. This volume, the first UNESCO Report on engineering, is an attempt to contribute to greater international understanding of the issues, challenges and opportunities facing engineering, with a particular focus on contributions of our discipline to sustainable development. The Report, one of the most cost-effective reports UNESCO has published, is based almost entirely on voluntary contributions from the international engineering community.