Engineering, Poverty and Development An Ethical Analysis

Extreme poverty is the daily reality of very many of the world s people Even without the effects of hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and landslides, the immediate prospects for both the urban and rural poor in many parts of the world are bleak, with little or no access to even the most basic of infrastructure, education and healthcare, and with little, or at best tenuous, legal tenure to land or property [10]. That this is a situation of major injustice, that engineers have the skills to ameliorate this injustice, and that this gives rise to at the very least an oppoitunity of professional capabilities, provide the basic motivations for taking an active role in such poverty reduction. 

The cultivation and exercise of the characteristic engineering virtues is especially important in work in developing countries as many of the checks, balances, social arrangements and supporting legal frameworks that are famiUar in more developed societies may not be apparent. For example, an expert on the implementation of water and sanitation programmes has observed  

The private sector will benefit directly if the Millennium Development Goals are achieved by having access to a healthier and better educated workforce, a more stable investment climate, and a reduction in the business risks that accompany poverty-related problems such as global insecurity, climate change and ethnic conflict. It will also benefit from the vast new markets that will be created by drawing the 4 billion people that currently live on less than US 2 per day into economic life [22]. 

Even so, not all business with developing countries is well meaning, one of the most notorious cases of bad practice being the sale by a UK-based company of a hugely expensive and inappropriate military air traffic control system to Tanzania, a case of a Blatant Absence of Ethics [23, 24]. Unfortunately, this was not a single and isolated incident of such bad practice. 

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