Why Should Engineering Account for Ecosystems?

Abstract

Engineering activities, like all human activities, rely on goods and services from nature. Goods include minerals, fossil resources, water, and soil, while services include regulation of air and water quality, climate, and soil fertility. Even though it is widely accepted that human activities cannot be sustained without availability of such goods and services from nature, engineering, like most disciplines, has ignored this role of nature and taken it for granted. Traditionally, engineering decisions have not accounted for nature’s carrying capacity and implicitly assumed that nature has an infinite capacity to supply most goods and services. Engineering has also attempted to dominate nature by controlling its intermittence or homeorhesis. Reasons behind this ignorance of nature’s role in sustaining engineering and human activities can be traced to the development of the basic underlying scientific principles. These were developed over the last few centuries when human impact on the environment was relatively tiny, and nature seemed vast and almost infinite. Ignorance of nature is a root cause of many of the sustainability challenges faced by humanity today, including ecosystem degradation. This ignorance can also mean missed opportunities to develop innovative ways of satisfying human needs by developing techno-ecologically synergistic solutions that can meet human needs while protecting and restoring nature. Such nature-positive solutions are estimated to present billions of dollars’ worth of business opportunities and millions of jobs across the world. This book aims to encourage and enable this transformation.