The Global Engineers: Building a Safe and Equitable World Together, is
inspired by the opportunities for engineers to contribute to global
prosperity. This book presents a vision for Global Engineering, and
identifies that engineers should be concerned with the unequal and
unjust distribution of access to basic services, such as water,
sanitation, energy, food, transportation, and shelter. As engineers, we
should place an emphasis on identifying the drivers, determinants, and
solutions to increasing equitable access to reliable services. Global
Engineering envisions a world where everyone has safe water, sanitation,
energy, food, shelter, and infrastructure, and can live in health,
dignity, and prosperity.
This book seeks to examine the role and ultimately the impact of
engineers in global development. Engineers are solutions-oriented
people. We enjoy the opportunity to identify a product or need, and
design appropriate technical solutions. However, the structural and
historical barriers to global prosperity requires that Engineers focus
more broadly on improving the tools and practice of poverty reduction
and that we include health, economics, policy, and governance as
relevant expertise with which we are conversant.
Engineers must become activists and advocates, rejecting ahistorical
technocratic approaches that suggest poverty can be solved without
justice or equity. Engineers must leverage our professional skills and
capacity to generate evidence and positive impact toward rectifying
inequalities and improving lives.
Half of this book is dedicated to profiles of engineers and other
technical professionals who have dedicated their careers to searching
for solutions to global development challenges. These stories introduce
the reader to the diverse opportunities and challenges in Global
Engineering.
