Closing Discussion

In the last lecture we discussed the role of engineers from sustainability perspective. Below are some of my thoughts on the last discussion and on the course as a whole.

It is obvious that European standard of living is not sustainable.

Some see this as a new market opportunity, some go desperate, and some doesn’t care at all.
There are a vast variety of areas on which sustainable solutions can be applied. These range from water resource management to waste management, from energy consumption to transportation. Even though engineering is an essential part of the solution, it usually tends to deal with the symptoms instead of essence of the problems. There is injustice, inequality, excessive consumption, ignorance and so on.
One common belief is that one has to sacrifice his welfare for the sake of sustainable living. When the term “sacrifice” is in the frame, actions are no more voluntary. I don’t believe in using fear (such as fear of climate change) as a mean to change the way people live. I think there is a way where one lives in harmony with the nature not because he is afraid, but because he enjoys this.
Living in harmony doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning all the technology and civilization. Engineering, social media and information technology is changing the way we are living. I don’t believe there is any problem with developing technology. At the end it is people’s decision how to utilize new technology and existing resources.
New technologies and regulations can bring timely solutions to the most urgent problems; however it would take more than sustainable technologies to have a real change.

ICT

Information and Communication Technologies can be enabling tools for those who are lagging behind the economic and sociological development. In the reference videos and during the web-lecture we saw how the ICT technologies can be used to help least developed nations to catch up with the rest of the world.
Obviously this technology alone wouldn’t be enough to create miracles. However it is certainly a powerful tool for empowering people. The penetration rates are quite high. ICT technologies are evolving in terms of their usage but also in terms of their status. What is seen as a luxury last century is a daily tool. And thanks to the rapid development of the sector, least developed nations would not be omitted totally. Widely available information can change people which in turn can change the fate of nations.

Challenges for transportation Planning in Asia Europe and North America

Dr Khan Rubayet Rahaman 29.11.2010

My first online lecture :)

Numbers and facts:

• passenger cars are responsible for 75% of passenger kilometres.
• 50% of car trips are less than 5 km. 30 % is less than 3 km.
• less than 5 % of passenger journeys are made by bicycle
• less than 10% are made by public transport.
• walking and cycling is decreasing.
• average car occupancy remains close to one (usually there is only one person in a car)

Dimensions of sustainable transportation planning challenges:

• Environmental: less emissions
• Social: less deaths and injuries->secure transportation
• Economic and Finance:
• Governance: monitoring, involvement, improvement
• Technical

More facts: Europe

• 72% of the europe’s citizens live in cities
• 84% by 2050 ??
• 85% of Europe’s GDP is generated in cities
• 40% of Europe’s CO2 emissions from road transport

Workshop on Waste Management

This workshop was held on 25 November 2010.

Number is huge:

2.6 billion People do not have access to basic sanitation.

We started the class with an overview of challenges in developing countries from sanitation point of view. Then we continued with a workshop. The main topic in concern was Kibera, which is an informal settlement that hosts more than 700,000 poor people.

Perquisites of the lecture included a video, Living in the Bucket. In the video, besides the sanitation problems, we saw a group of local youngsters working voluntarily on improving the condition of common toilets. It is obvious from the video that a little inspiration can cause a big change.

We started the workshop with a brief barnstorming on four topics. Then we were to choose one of these four topics. After the video I was already interested in the inspiration and community participation part so I took part in the group that worked on the question below:

How best to mobilize the community to improve their situation, what forms of organization should be proposed? Propose a mobilization strategy.

Brainstorming revealed three main topics to be considered to answer this question. These are:

1. Awareness & education: NGOs seeing a problem doesn’t necessarily mean that the locals perceive it as a problem. Maybe residents of Kibera are not aware that lack of sanitation kills more people than armed assaults do, in their neighborhood.

2. Coordination & leadership: how to organize the community? Youngsters should be a part of the solution.

3. Financing: sharing the costs between NGOs and the community can improve the involvement of the community.

Here are my take-away from the workshop:

• It is important to listen and understand people. From an office, one can see frame-work of the situation way different than the people in question see.
• Top-down solutions are not the best ways to solve problems of peoples.
• People are capable of taking initiatives on their own. People seem to need inspiration more than they need new technologies or external resources.
• New technologies or resources are not necessarily bad but when these are scarce, inspiration can be an effective mean to overcome difficulties.

Waste Management

This session was given as an individual work based on some resources.

When solid waste is not treated properly, it poses several health hazards for local inhabitants, and pollutes natural resources like water, soil or air. Waste management aims at minimizing the health, environmental and aesthetic impacts of solid wastes.

Only a small part of the overall waste is treated properly in developing countries. Most of this waste treatment effort is done by the informal sector in developing countries. Sophisticated waste processing units handle large amounts of solid waste in industrialized countries.

When we look at the waste generation in high income countries we see that the amount is very large compared to the low income countries. An interesting issue is the e-waste, which is is any refuse created by discarded electronic devices and components as well as substances involved in their manufacture or use. One of the reference documents mentions a campaign to provide unused computers to low income countries; we see that this initiative turned into a way of getting rid of waste product. This again shows how good intentions can have negative outcomes for those who are supposed to benefit the good initiative.

One reference mentions a change in consumer and human lifestyles can reduce the amount of waste produced. I agree on this view; even though dealing with treating the waste is important part of the phenomena, it is mainly a symptom of excessive consumption and more importantly unnecessary consumption. I believe that most of the waste generated in underdeveloped societies as well as the modern ones is avoidable and waste treatment and waste production should be treated together to achieve concrete solutions.

In conclusion as we saw in many other sustainable technologies, the problems are far from being completely technical and social, legal, economic, and environmental aspects affects the phenomena as much as the technology.

Sustainable Energy Technologies and Resources

We had two sessions on sustainable energy technologies and resources. The sessions were held by Jukka Paatero on 15 and 18 November 2010. One course material, “Off-grid electricity for developing countries”, was quite interesting, partly because it referred to E.F. Schumacher and his thoughts and visions.

Here is what I got from these sessions.

Issue?

• 2 billion have no access to modern forms of energy
• Lack of energy has implications on health (indoor open fire) and on income (time spent on collecting wood)

Why is the situation like this?

• Lack of access to a grid (remote villages)
• Meter reading and billing in remote areas might not be feasible.
• High initial costs for poor households.

Centralized solutions?

From the production and distribution point of view, larger electric systems are more feasible compared to smaller ones, since;

1. It is easier to balance the variations in the grid when the system is large. Momentum of the system increases with increasing grid size. This momentum is the system frequency that acts as a buffer for instantaneous changes. This makes uniform distribution of electrical energy easier.

2. The efficiency of electric conversion systems such as hydropower plants increases with increasing plant size.

P.S: Centralized systems are typically not environmentally friendly.

Exciting decentralized energy production and distribution concepts

• wind battery charging
• micro solar
• micro hydro
• community involvement
• low cost connections
• local ownership
• local solutions

Social vs. technical issues

The main issue regarding electrification seems to be social instead of being technical. There are many conflicting interests when topic in question is energy. Wishes of the community, governance and electricity supplier are not always matching. One example of this can be an electricity supplier company that refuses to provide electricity lines to a school located in an urban slum. The supplier company would argue that the lines supplied would be misused by residents of the slums. And by misuse I mean that they would steal electricity as the people living in slums cannot afford otherwise. One of the topics of the workshop was on this issue and I think it was a good exercise.

Conclusions

As problems related to energy vary depending on the location, solutions tend to be local. I see that there is a local adaptation when the resources are scarce. On the other hand, in developed countries, it seems to me, that the technology and economic power is used to provide abundant energy to the citizens, which in turn leads to excessive consumption of energy without considering implications of this consumption on environment.

It is inspiring to see people and organizations working to provide technologies and knowledge that will make people’s lives better.

I especially liked the following sentence from E.F. Schumacher:

“The gift of material goods makes people dependent. The gift of knowledge sets them free”

Water: views on its management and related challenges

Class was given by Marco Keskinen.

Numbers are strong:

• ~1 billion lack access to water, ~2.5 billion to sanitation

• ~2.3 billion suffer from diseases linked to water

• 4/5 of all diseases, 1/3 of all deaths are due to low quality domestic water.

On the other hand, I find this very interesting: Most of the world’s water is used for agriculture: on average ~70%, many developing countries ~90%.

We were asked to determine which regions are critical in terms of water scarcity in 2020. Middle East and North Africa were the first regions that came to our minds. However, as we discussed we came to another conclusion: lack of water resources is not enough to explain water scarcity phenomena. The problem turns out to be the management of water instead of the resource itself. Simply put, as the money, resources and good governance decrease, water scarcity increases.

There are examples of cities that are built in areas where water is scarce, such as Las Vegas and Dubai. Hence they don’t lack access to water resources. It seems that a city can provide water needed for sanitation and drinking to its citizens no matter how harsh the geographical conditions are. As long as agriculture is not the main source of income, a city can survive in a desert.

The concept of virtual water is an important but not a widely discussed topic: you import oranges from Middle East and you are consuming their water, indirectly. The same applies when you shop from H&M, you basically contribute to shrunk of Aral sea. Even though in most developed cities people have water abundance, their daily choices affect people living in another part of the world. I believe this is not an easy concept to perceive, and many are unaware of this.

During the class we saw the water resources with respect to five changes:

• Population growth & urbanisation

• Development issues (informal sector, polarisation, health)

• Energy production

• Climate change

• Environmental degradation

When we were asked to rank these, population growth was the foremost factor that affect water resources. This is because the other changes are closely related to and can be explained by the population growth.