Forty-nine shades of green: ecology and sustainability in the academic formation of engineers

Abstract

‘Ecological engineering’ is relatively recent. It resembles chemical, hydrological and other engineering where the title indicates another discipline specialisation (ecology, chemistry, hydrology) is closely associated. Differently, civil, mechanical, or electrical engineering titles indicate engineering subdivisions based on areas of application. The ecological engineering title is twice asymmetric: it indicates a kind of engineering, not science (engineering ecology); and only part of ecological science has as yet been included in ecological engineering. The ‘civil’ engineering descriptor is defined by its context, rather than this area being defined by its descriptor. Civil engineering includes a specialisation with another inappropriately undescriptive title—environmental engineering. Ecological and environmental engineering are readily confused by the public, ecologists, and other engineers. There have recently been laudable efforts by engineers, ecologists, economists, writers, and many others to move society towards more sustainable living. Young engineers can be encouraged in this by greater understanding of ecology and sustainability in their academic and professional formation. The desirable formation of ecological engineers remains unclear. Meanwhile, many approaches exist to introducing ecological understanding and principles of sustainability into other engineering academic curricula. Some approaches are discussed in this paper, in the context of developing appropriate education and training in ecological engineering.

Introduction

Ecological engineering is a relatively recent kind of engineering. Its origins lie not in engineering, but in systems ecology. Howard T. Odum stated in his 1971 book Environment, Power and Society (Odum, 1971, p. 274): ‘The management of nature is ecological engineering, an endeavour with singular aspects supplementary to those of traditional engineering. A partnership with nature is a better phrase.’

Mitsch (1998) quotes earlier work by Odum and his colleagues describing ecological engineering as involving ‘those cases in which the energy supplied by man is small relative to the natural sources, but sufficient to produce large effects in the resulting patterns and processes’ (Odum, 1962). Noting the ‘thousands of years’ during which ecological engineering practice has been developing in China, Mitsch (1998) quotes another description of ecological engineering as ‘… a specially designed system of production processes in which the principles of the species symbiosis and the cycling and regeneration of substances in an ecological system are applied …’ (Ma et al., 1988).

In his review paper, Mitsch (1998) tabulates 18 ‘synonyms, subdisciplines, or fields similar to ecological engineering’. That is one every 2 years on average since Odum in 1962! In order to have a clear discussion on appropriate form and content of a curriculum for ecological engineering, as intended in this paper, some preliminary statements on semantics are desirable.