The crises of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss are two of the most serious issues of our time.
At this time, civil engineers across the UK have declared a climate and bio-diversity crisis, setting a commitment to strengthen our working practices and creating complete engineering outcomes that have more positive impacts on the world around us.
The civil engineers’ declaration sits alongside declarations from structural engineers and buildings services engineers. This brings together the community of engineers that are responsible for the conception, design and efficient use of our primary built infrastructure – the infrastructure that underpins our economic prosperity and social wellbeing.
UK Civil Engineers’ climate & biodiversity emergency pledge
We will strive to:
- Advocate for faster change in our industry towards regenerative design practices and a higher governmental funding priority to support this.
- Continue to raise awareness of the climate and biodiversity emergencies and the urgent need for action among the industry’s clients, collaborators and supply chains.
- Apply, and further develop, climate and biodiversity mitigation principles as key measures of our industry’s success, demonstrated through rating systems, awards, prizes and listings.
- Extend the sharing of knowledge and research to these ends on an open source basis.
- Evaluate all new projects against the need to contribute positively to society and enhanced well-being, while simultaneously averting climate breakdown – and encourage our clients to adopt this approach – using the holistic approach of PAS2080 to reinforce sound decision-making.
- Upgrade existing built infrastructure systems for extended use as a more-carbon-efficient alternative to demolition and new build when that is the most efficient solution for whole life carbon.
- Include – as part of the basic scope of all our work – life cycle costing, whole life carbon modelling and post-construction evaluation, to optimise and reduce embodied, operational and user carbon and other resource uses.
- Adopt more regenerative design principles in practice with the aim of providing civil engineering design that produces complete infrastructure systems that enable society to make the necessary changes to match the goals of the UK becoming a net-zero economy by 2050.
- Extend, now, the consideration of whole-life carbon targets for all long-duration projects taking into account wider social, economic and environmental effects, to ensure delivery of the longer-term goals of this declaration.
- Apply a common cross-sector sustainability rating scheme, adopting the principles of CEEQUAL to all new projects whether or not they are formally assessed.
- Increase current levels of collaboration between clients, engineers, contractors and other professionals involved in the design and provision of complete infrastructure systems to further reduce waste during construction and operation of the assets.
- Accelerate the shift to low embodied carbon materials in all our work.
- Minimise wasteful use of resources in our civil engineering design, both in quantum and in detail.
We hope that every civil engineering practice and relevant product manufacturers operating in the UK will join us in making this commitment. The declaration recognises that engineers have a pivotal role in driving the net-zero target set by the UK government.
Show your commitment to delivering net-zero infrastructure by signing the declaration.
ABG’s contribution to carbon reduction based on Geocomposite production 2018:
