ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS
BSEE
Making use of momentum from the year of awareness
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Each year a small group of young professionals from across a range of industries are selected to represent the UK at the G7 Youth Summit. They are tasked with engaging young people across the country to understand the issues they are most concerned about, debate them with counterparts from around the world and submit joint recommendaons for acon to the G7 leaders
his year, James Forsey, a 25-year-old engineer working for Buro Happold, is one of just four UK representatives. Here, he talks about his role, his passion for tackling the climate emergency and his belief that we have a ready-to-implement weapon for fighting it: the circular economy.
Every review of 2019 talked about the climate crisis. It was the year of strikes, the year of Greta, the year more people than ever developed an enhanced alertness of the serious situation we find ourselves in. It is clear that the situation will not be improved unless we all work collectively. Society has to band together and change how it approaches day to day operations in order to succeed in finding ways to make a real difference. From individuals cutting down their household energy usage to major industries making sweeping changes to their practices, we all have our role to play in bringing the world back from the brink of disaster.
While, as I’ve said, 2019 was a year of awareness, going forward we must use this growing momentum to make real progress with solutions. Although the conversation over the climate emergency has been ongoing for years, last year’s increased awareness highlighted the appetite individuals around the world have to take real action, myself included.
Earlier this year I was selected to be part of the G7 Youth Summit – an event dedicated to highlighting the major world issues which young people are most concerned with, and ensuring these issues are in the minds of those at the highest level of government. For me, climate change has to be a central theme of any discussion of this nature. It will affect all of us – most of all young people. So, my application to join the Youth Summit set out how I believe both individuals and the engineering sector can start to do that.
As engineers, we often sub- consciously talk in broad terms about adopting the principles of the circular economy in our work. We do this in the context of efficiency and cost- saving, but considering how these principles can be pro-actively geared towards reducing our carbon footprint will have a dramatic effect. The beauty of the principle is that it’s all encompassing – it’s about maximising the value we can get from every material, every bit of energy, everything we once perceived to be waste. It encourages us to repurpose products, reduce use of non- recyclable materials and cut our energy use – all of which can help us to reduce our carbon footprints. I believe that the engineering industry already understands the value of the circular economy and sees the benefits of using it to help tackle climate change. However, despite a desire to make quick progress, in some ways our hands are tied by regulation. As design engineers we are bound by design standards and specifications, as of course we should be. These are standards put in place to ensure safety and quality – the most important factors for anyone working in the built environment. However, they are enshrined in policy, making them difficult to change. Engineers looking to innovate and make better use of materials in a safe way can still find themselves at odds with official guidance.
As I’ve said above, we’ve reached make or break time. Drastic action has to be taken now, this year, for us to have even a chance of meeting the climate targets set out in the Paris agreement. Any shift in policy is necessarily approached with care and consideration – the cost implications, impact on the supply chain and countless other factors have to be considered. However, in order to adopt more sustainable approaches quickly, we need a sense of urgency to be reflected in the speed of policy changes.
What makes initiatives such as this so important is that they build bridges between key industry figures and policymakers. The risk of taking pioneering approaches is too great if progressed by industry alone – we need the backing and faith of the governing bodies to help us play a greater role. Industry and
government need to be encouraged to work in tandem, and every chance we get to move that forward and influence policy and guideline changes should be grabbed with both hands.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed how we will work in the coming months, and will undoubtedly shift the discussion during both the Youth Summit and the G7 itself, whatever format it takes. Today, leaders around the world are focused on doing all they can to tackle the pandemic, and this is quite rightly their top priority. However, we should not lose sight of the climate crisis while working to tackle this outbreak. The improving air quality and dropping emissions as a result of the lockdown in the UK is further evidence of the human impact on these negative environmental effects. I believe the Youth Summit delegates have an opportunity to reinforce that message, and throughout the process I’ll continue to develop my ideas for how we can make real progress.
I won’t let this opportunity pass me
by. I feel incredibly proud and privileged to find myself in this position, working with a talented team dedicated to making young people’s voices heard. We’ll be working hard over the next year to bring the issues those in the UK feel most strongly about to the attention of those with the power to do something about them. COVID-19 might change our methods but it won’t change our drive or commitment. The aim is still the same: to be able to look back on this year and say we made a real difference.
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BUILDING SERVICES & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER MAY 2020 7
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