Question

Kanchana has been working as an environmental engineer at a consulting firm for over twenty-five years. Well-known for settling disputes between his corporate clients before litigation must be pursued, Kanchana often analyses technical data, particularly distributions of solid particle pollution, presented by disputing parties to help them reach a compromise on the cost of environmental clean-up. For example, two parties may be separated from one another by a strip of land; however, each party must fiscally contribute in keeping the land free from pollutants.
One day, Kanchana was contacted by a journalist to talk about his experiences at the firm. Kanchana spoke about how he often encountered cases where companies did not accurately depict levels of solid particle pollution occupying the companies’ respective surroundings. Instead, technical experts, who are mostly engineers, would misrepresent data in order to make it seem that minority parties were responsible for a greater part of the contamination. At the end of the interview, Kanchana emphasized the necessity of engineers taking ownership and being honest about the presentation of data.

Answer 1

Engineers are one amongst many specialists who are highly regarded in society for their knowledge, expertise, aptitude and the ability to contribute in solving the real world problems that our societies face. Naturally they have, in addition to legal obligation, moral and ethical obligations towards members of the society in particular and towards whole environment and ecology in general.

The technical complexity of modern day environmental management is such that it is the environmental engineers themselves who can understand and interpret the numbers that are obtained through sensors and other methods of environment monitoring. Sometimes it results into conflict of interest for environmental engineers as to what to do. To do right they have to tell the truth but which can hurt their firm and so their career. Or they can modify numbers somehow to protect and save themselves and accuse the other party.

It becomes difficult for other stakeholders like normal citizens and even policymakers to understand the problem completely. Moreover, the bigger and resourceful companies might actually be able to exploit the legal system in their favour even if they are guilty.

This does many harms over long term. Limits the fair competition and promote the corruption. Harm the ecosystem and consequently ecosystem services vital to the health of biodiversity. The damage to the planet can be significant and irreversible.

But this damage can be minimised by practicing what we preach. A strict third party audit system of such polluted places is required to independently assess the reality. Strict environmental reporting protocols both for engineers and companies should be implemented. Any deviation should be looked into and penalty decided without delay. New generation should be made more environmentally aware to encourage positive attitude towards environment.