Today (Friday 4 March) marks World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development and shines a spotlight on the pivotal role engineers must play in building a liveable future.
Berg Engineering CEO Derek Berg says that – tragically – the 2022 theme ‘build back wiser’ comes at a time when Australians are reeling at scenes of devastation from South-East Queensland and New South Wales floods and working desperately to recover from the effects of the pandemic.
“We can no longer write these natural disasters off as one-in-a-hundred-year events. From bushfires, to cyclones, to weather events that see a month’s worth of rainfall in a day, our natural disasters are increasing in both frequency and intensity.”
Climate change is an urgent challenge and requires the biggest engineering transition Australia has faced. Engineers are crucial to this – through developing innovative and affordable technologies and systems to create solutions such as green hydrogen, low emissions steel, energy storage, and carbon capture utilisation and storage.
“As countries move toward rebuilding their economies after COVID-19 and environmental disasters, recovery plans can shape the 21st-century economy in ways that are clean, green, healthy, safe and more resilient,” Mr Berg said.
“Our business has an integral role to play in engineering this future. Engineers will be key to designing and managing systems and technologies to beat climate change, strengthen our health systems, and bolster supply chains.
“We know that engineering touches almost every aspect of modern life and World Engineering Day is an important acknowledgment of our critical work and how every day we, as engineers, help advance society through great engineering.”
This year’s World Engineering Day celebrations include the highly anticipated launch of World Engineering Day 24HRS LIVE. This is the first-ever 24-hour live broadcast of a Global UNESCO Day. This is a global stream of engineering activities from across the world. From Sydney to Costa Rica, and everything in between.