The Sri Lankan Institution of Engineers sponsors a series of lectures each year including the prestigious EOE Pereira Memorial Lecture in honour of the founder of engineering education in Sri Lanka. The 2002 lecturer was Duleep Danton of SMEC's Water and Environment Group based in Cooma. The lecture was delivered at the Institution's headquarters in Colombo in September 2002.

Globalization and Change - Civil Engineering in Sri Lanka

Duleep Danton

SMEC International Pty Ltd

There are several reasons for my selection of the topic “Globalization and Change - Civil Engineering in Sri Lanka”. One of them was from having read, in the one evening some months ago, the newsletters I had received in the mail that day from two professional institutions of which I am a member: the Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka and the Institution of Engineers, Australia. Even taking into account the difference in the economic environment in which the two organizations operate, the articles in the two journals viewed technological exchange across national borders quite differently. The difference intrigued me sufficiently to explore how Sri Lankan engineers were equipping themselves to deal with the opportunities and challenges of globalization.

The topic was therefore chosen to allow me – in the capacity of both an ‘outsider’ and an ‘insider’ - to offer a few thoughts on why it may be appropriate for the civil engineering fraternity in Sri Lanka to be interested in the issues of globalization. In addition, perhaps, how that interest could induce new strategies for action.

It is clear from the budget speeches for the past few years and from its international dialogue that the Sri Lanka Government’s policy is to position the country to benefit from globalization. Sri Lanka is, in fact, a founding member of the World Trade Organization (WTO); the WTO being the global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations, and therefore the main facilitator of globalization of trade. What is relevant to the civil engineering profession in this regard is that the WTO agreements are not restricted to just trade in ‘goods’ - it also covers trade in services. The multilateral rules covering international trade in services is called the General Agreement on Trade in Services or GATS, for short. Sri Lanka, like many other countries, is currently tabling proposals regarding its specific commitments to the GATS process. There are several areas, including engineering design and construction covered by GATS.

In any cross-section of people, including the distinguished group here today, there are those who are pro-globalization, and those who are against it. However, for the profession as a whole – as it was perhaps for China when it decided to join the WTO - it is not a case of supporting globalization or opposing it. The rational view is to accept it as an emerging and powerful global reality, and to formulate strategies to manage it to minimize the adverse effects and maximize the gains from it. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the engineering industry or a professional lobby in Sri Lanka should have had, and be continuing to have, an input to the Government’s policy position in the GATS process. Maybe I should pose that as a question to you: have you individually or collectively had an input to that process?

I ask, because civil engineers are probably impacted more by public policy than engineers of any other branch of engineering. The development, redevelopment and preservation of Sri Lanka’s infrastructure are influenced by public policy decisions at all levels of government. From highways to municipal services to water sector development, decisions made by our elected representatives affect how we practice our profession. While civil engineers are involved in the implementation of public policy decisions pertaining to planning, designing and constructing a nation's infrastructure, we are very often not involved in the development of the public policy even though it affects us acutely. That was the “traditional” situation depicted in Slide 3 of the PowerPoint presentation.

The reason for that may lie in the fact that engineers - in their professional capacity - are very often only interested in the implementation of public infrastructure policy and are absent during the development of the policy, with little or no input to the policy dialogue.

The philosophy of not mixing together implementation with policy, once the policy on a particular matter is decided upon, is fundamental to the notion of professionalism. However, that does not mean that there should be no professional input to the policy dialogue leading up to the policy decision. In fact, the contrary is true.

As the series of slides 5 to 10 in the PowerPoint presentation indicated, globalization further heightens the need for engineers to maintain a policy dialogue with government and other stakeholders. Thus the crucial element in the endeavour to maximise the opportunities of globalization for its members, and minimise the risks, is for the civil engineering profession to be a part of the policy dialogue with government on public infrastructure development.

Governments have many constituencies and many demands made on it and on the resources it controls. Getting the ear of Government and keeping it is a skill that many industry and professional bodies work hard to learn. Two organisations in Australia relevant to the civil engineering fraternity in Sri Lanka, and who engage in such dialogue, are the Institution of Engineers, Australia (IEAust) and the Australian Construction Industry Forum (ACIF). IEAust has a dedicated policy unit that undertakes direct lobbying, appears before parliamentary committees and prepares responses and submissions to government. The ACIF is a peak consultative body for the building and construction industry in Australia, and articulates the views of its members to Ministers and senior Government officials. While the mechanisms may be country-specific, I mention these as examples to illustrate the value accorded in Australia to establishing industry dialogue with government.

Generic skills applicable to working with the government and other stakeholders are now increasingly required in the routine business of the profession itself. I am referring here to those aspects of the civil engineering profession that have to do with skills required to work across a variety of disciplines; skills that are assuming increasing importance in a world where civil engineering no longer serves a single stakeholder. Civil engineers therefore increasingly need to acquire proficiency to assess, prioritise and meet the needs of several stakeholders simultaneously. The government, other financiers such as donor agencies, regulatory bodies such as the environmental authority and community-based organizations are some of the stakeholders that need to be satisfied. And, to that list must, of course, be added the direct user of the facilities.

In the water sector - which I use as an example because I am familiar with it - these new areas of skill include water policy development, water law and negotiation skills, trans-jurisdictional water allocation, water valuation and economics, demand management, public-private partnerships and stakeholder participation. These are not traditional subjects for water engineers. Nor do they need to be undertaken directly by water engineers as long as their relevance and value are understood as complementary disciplines that are necessary to be integrated into water resources management to meet the challenges of administering a limited and vital resource. In fact, it would be proper for a mix of disciplines – engineering, social and physical sciences, law, etcetera – to be applied to the management of water resources, working in true multi-disciplinary fashion.

For example, in New South Wales in Australia, non-engineering professionals have filled the breach where engineers have been unable or unwilling to diversify their skills to these fields. In Vietnam, where an effort is being made to implement a new Water Law and introduce integrated water resources management, many of the policy-type skills are being handled by professionals whose first, and often second, degrees are engineering. Under the Nile Initiative, African countries within the Nile Basin are gearing up to combine these modern themes into their traditional civil engineering courses. In Sri Lanka, the strategy for integrating engineering expertise with other disciplines to achieve the mix of economic, social and environmental objectives of its urban and rural communities may require review and adjustment.

Sri Lanka, compared to many other developing countries, started with a high educational base, including professional engineers with qualifications that were well recognized. However, the triple bottom line (i.e., economic, social and environmental value adding) of infrastructure operations in Sri Lanka shows mediocre performance. Admittedly, this cannot be attributed to the performance of engineers. However, we know that we can only remedy matters within our own control. Therefore, let us first ask ourselves the hard questions: Have we remained alert to the reforms taking place in infrastructure operations elsewhere, to address similar problems? What innovative practices are we adopting to survive in a world in which the end-user is demanding more services whilst our operating budgets are continually cut in real terms? Have we made the right alliances with other stakeholders? And other similar questions.

At this time, I would like to illustrate the point using an example. It describes the historical development of water resources briefly, and the changes that have occurred in the field of water resources management in the ten years following the adoption of Agenda 21 in Rio in 1992 for sustainable development of the earth’s resources. This example was selected because it illustrates the thesis that I have tried to develop today, in regard to the need for the civil engineering profession to develop cross-sectoral linkages, multi-disciplinary approaches and policy dialogue in its work.

Water Resources Management – a case for establishing dialogue with government and other stakeholders

Traditionally, water from rivers and tributaries has been extracted to meet domestic and crop water needs of communities for many centuries. As construction technologies for harvesting and distribution of water developed in the last century, increasingly larger amounts have been abstracted from both surface and groundwater sources and conveyed, sometimes over large distances, to irrigate agricultural areas and to provide water supplies to urban communities.

These technological developments also occurred in Sri Lanka over the past 50 years or so. The resulting socio-economic benefits were substantial, and prompted regional development plans designed to realise two national objectives:

§ provide opportunities for land-poor wet zone farmers to have their own irrigated farm lot in the dry zone; and concurrently,

§ achieve the goal of food self-sufficiency in Sri Lanka.

These goals lead in turn to rapid development of water resources for agriculture. The Mahaweli Programme signalled the height of such expansion in Sri Lanka, with hydropower development also constituting an important component.

In Sri Lanka, too, as in other countries, water resources development schemes were undertaken largely as discrete development projects to meet the needs of a single use - predominantly irrigation or hydropower.

Governments and project designers supported by donor agencies adopted the aim for productive use of water resources at that time doubtless because of two broad reasons:

§ they brought quick social and economic benefits; and

§ they occurred in a period when the vulnerability of the ecosystems - which were dependent on the health of rivers, soil and vegetation - to the massive modifications had not yet been adequately researched and documented.

Project designs therefore did not fully analyse the cumulative effects of the changes that were forced on the environment, particularly river regimes, by these interventions. They also made broadly optimistic assumptions regarding the ways in which the schemes would be operated. In doing so, there was conspicuous failure to develop the policy and institutional arrangements that were necessary to make those assumptions valid. This omission further compromised the sustainability of the schemes.

To put another way, the development of water resources occurred at a rate that exceeded the required pace of change in the stakeholders – namely, the concerned people, systems and institutional structures – if they were to benefit from the developments in a sustainable way.

Since changing people, systems and institutions is a complex exercise, the solution has generally been to attempt to find remedies primarily through investment in further physical infrastructure. The funds required for the purpose are substantial from any reckoning. And, in a situation characterised by limited revenue and extreme pressure on national budgets, resources for such investments will almost certainly have to be diverted from funds that would otherwise be utilised to meet other basic community needs such as education and health.

Therefore professional engineers and planners are obliged to examine the cause of problems created by previous programs and practices. And this is where the broader perspective of globalisation – the incentive for sharing knowledge and experience across countries – could provide insights to these issues.

The lessons from several countries indicate that water sector investments used purely for physical infrastructure will continue to yield diminishing economic returns unless steps are taken to adopt practices that enhance productivity and achieve efficient (and sustainable) resource use. These changes come with the adoption of appropriate policies and institutional arrangements, typically, those that would allow for better water allocation and sharing and pricing. In general, successful policies and institutional arrangements are those that have been achieved through consultation with stakeholders, and by employing good data and robust decision support systems.

In regard to the direction and methodology for change, it is useful to see the experience of “mature” water resource management agencies, i.e., those agencies that have achieved more financially, socially and environmentally sustainable water management arrangements for the communities that they serve. In Australia for instance, it is widely accepted that the problems of water scarcity, siltation of reservoirs, pollution of rivers, and degradation of watersheds and ecosystems be best addressed by managing water and related resources in an integrated manner. “Integration” here refers to management of water on a “whole of resource” basis, working across sectoral and administrative boundaries. Such an approach requires many disciplines to work jointly, to bring together the various strands: firstly to determine the resource requirements of various sectors and then the resource management practices to meet agreed needs of all sectors. These practices include:

§ legislation for integrated and sustainable management of water resources

§ inter-agency cooperative arrangements to ensure sharing of information and coordination of programs

§ participatory processes to achieve equity across all uses, and

§ undertaking the planning, conservation, development, and management of water in a river basin context.

Access to the worldwide expertise and experience that has been gathered in this field - the field of integrated water resources management - and its application to the Sri Lankan situation will require Sri Lankan professional engineers, planners, scientists and policy makers to foster an open and inventive mind. If you excuse the cliché, inventing the wheel needs to occur only once on earth; its useful application however, needs different but nonetheless important skills from other developers, with sound input from the end user.

In regard to addressing the challenges currently facing the water sector in Sri Lanka, it is significant that the policy and institutional arrangements now being considered by the Government of Sri Lanka appear to have bipartisan support from the two major political parties. However, much needs to be done to make economic and equitable use of the country’s water resources in a sustainable manner. An important part of that process is participation by the major stakeholders.

The speed, and indeed the success, of that process is likely to depend, among other factors, on the capacity of those in the irrigation, water supply and related sub sectors in the civil engineering profession to bring themselves up to speed on integrated water management issues.

Also, from a broader viewpoint, the civil engineering fraternity in Sri Lanka must take its rightful place as an important stakeholder, in the policy dialogue on water reform, a reformation process that will inevitably occur. To do so, it needs to inform itself of the issues in an objective way. This may require adopting new and open approaches to the issues as they are inherently multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral in nature. It would be even more unfortunate not to participate at all in the dialogue, as it would consign the civil engineering fraternity to the status of a spectator in a sphere that has great potential for the profession in decades to come, and in which it has much to contribute in the immediate future.

I would like to conclude with best wishes to the Institution, and particularly the civil engineering fraternity, in all its endeavours.

APPENDIX

If the case for establishment of a policy dialogue with Government, industry and other stakeholders from a positive angle is not convincing, it is perhaps salutary to view it from the negative standpoint. In the services sector, non-participation of the profession in the public policy dialogue could lead to seizure of public policy design by other groups, both national and international. This could occur even if those services remain in state ownership.