Environmental development & sustainability: technology & management

Abstract

Most of the people all over the world today have an immediate and intuitive sense of the urgent need to build a sustainable future. Environmental engineering is the branch of bioengineering and sustainable engineering that is concerned with protecting people from the effects of adverse environmental effects, such as pollution, and improving and safe environmental quality. Environmental bioengineers work to improve recycling, waste disposal, public health, and water and air pollution control. Environmental health bioengineering can be considered as sanitary bioengineering brought to meet the needs of the future of the World. Sanitary bioengineering is essentially disease-oriented: it may be defined as the use of bioengineering principles and bioengineering devices for public health purposes. Environmental health bioengineering is the application of bioengineering fundaments to the control, modification or adaptation of the physical, chemical or biological characteristics of the environment in the interest of the health, comfort and social activities of people. It requires the control (quantity and quality) of the basic necessities and waste by-products, whether solid, liquid or gaseous. These by-products, if uncontrolled and allowed to accumulate, lead to widespread disease and physical damage, and could literally make human existence impossible. The fundamental concept of sustainable development is depending on the social, the economic and the environmental dimensions. For development to be sustainable, all the 3 dimensions need to be addressed in a balanced and integrated way, to reach present and future needs. Education for sustainable development is an emerging but dynamic concepts that encompass a new vision of education that seeks to empower people of all ages to assume responsibility for creating a sustainable future. Today, the prospects for future health depend to an increasing extent on the processes of globalisation and on the emergence of global environmental changes occurring in response to the great weight of humankind's economic activity. The globalization of trade, travel and culture is likely to have both positive and negative impacts on health. Increased trade in services and products harmful to health and the environment, travel and mass migration of people constitute additional global threats to health. A healthy population is essential for economic development. The modern engineering education should be reformed to include the spheres of economy, science and education. Finally, we have to accelerate progress towards universal health coverage and the sustainable development goals by ensuring equitable access to a skilled and motivated health worker within a performing health system.