Environmental Challenges for Engineers

The challenge facing the engineering profession is to design in a manner that protects the environment and promotes sustainable development: To meet this challenge, the profession has to emphasize the necessity for all engineers to understand the challenge and to respect the parameters that govern it. To achieve this, the author suggests that the engineering profession should work to develop worldwide partnerships and collaborations, such as the World Engineering Partnerships for Sustainable Development (WEPSD), as well as to develop a set of ethical principles that will govern an engineer's ability to reject demands by certain elements of the public to design unsustainably, with short-term profit and expediency as the immediate goals.