The Bridge - Issue 3, 2023 - 25

Feature
Why Community Engagement (Still) Matters?
Mary Mathias; Guru Madhavan, Senior Member, IEEE
In the early 1970s, when a group of technocrats took
the Green Revolution to Bali, Indonesia, the results were
catastrophic. They insisted that the island inhabitants
redesign the subak-a centuries-old rice paddy irrigation
system deeply rooted in the community's history and
values. In place of the sophisticated system with excellent
rice yields and means of pest eradication, officials inserted
a system of " technology packets " that combined new rice
varieties, fertilizers, and an aggressive harvesting schedule,
all in the name of increasing production. What they ended
up with were decimated rice paddies full of pests and
fungus [1, 2]. Had the officials responsibly engaged with
the Balinese people and learned about the subak system
as well as the community's values and traditions that
supported it, the destructive results of their intervention
could have been easily avoided.
Engineers affect society in ways unlike many other
professions. They can consciously and unconsciously
transform lives and affect generations through their
creations, and so they spend years training and countless
hours designing, testing, and iterating. However, a
fundamental portion of any engineering project, particularly
with civic objectives, is far too often overlooked or
dismissed: community engagement. We argue that it's
impossible to complete any engineering project successfully
without community involvement. And as with Bali, not
engaging the public can have pernicious consequences.
The term " community engagement " can and does have
multiple connotations depending on how one views
it. In general, it is an explicit action focused on working
with a community for the community's benefit [3]. This
can take many forms for engineers, such as educational
programming, town hall meetings, or even focus groups,
but at its core, community engagement should ideally
deepen the understanding between the engineers and the
community and the impacts a project can have over its
intended life course.
A key first step in any engineering project should be to
listen and reflect. Who is this project for, and whom is
it affecting? This necessitates community involvement
in every step of a project, from planning and design
through execution and evaluation, and all groups within
a community, particularly those traditionally marginalized,
need to be identified and included [4]. The hallmark of
engineering design is to operate under constraints. While
some contractors may see community engagement
activities as an unnecessary delay for a pre-laid schedule,
engineering design should also operate with the highest
level of accountability. It is vital that everyone who will be
impacted by the work be heard and considered.
In far too many cases over the history of modern
engineering, underrepresented and marginalized
communities have been overlooked and adversely affected
as a result. Without being a member of a community-be
that geographical, racial, cultural, or socioeconomic-a
person can't fully understand what it is to be a part of that
community: how that community functions, what their
needs are, or how something will affect that community.
An engineering firm can design a construction project
that seems exceptional on paper and perhaps appealing
to investors and policymakers, but what if it doesn't lead
to where the community needs to go or disrupts an
ecosystem the community uses in an altogether different
way? Or what if a bridge is helpful but far down the list of
priority projects that would benefit a community? These
are not novel thoughts. Yet, as engineers, we raise them
because assuming we know what the best course of
action for a community is will only perpetuate the cycle of
marginalized communities being handed technology they
cannot or do not want to use, or worse, unintentionally
being harmed by projects in which they have no input.
Consider another classic example: People around the world
depend on burning wood, coal, or other materials in their
homes in order to generate heat and prepare food. These
stoves often have detrimental health and environmental
consequences, so many, many clean stoves have been
created to mitigate these effects. And yet millions of people
continue to use these harmful stoves. Why? In many cases,
clean stoves don't function in the context of the end user's
daily life [5]. Had the engineers who created the un-used
stoves engaged with the communities they were trying to
help in the development phase of the stoves, they could
have learned about how the stoves are actually used,
what the community's needs and concerns are, and what
stumbling blocks the engineers' initial assumptions may
confront.
Community engagement isn't a one-way street. The
community too needs to learn from engineers in order
to become informed-and constructive-collaborators
in a project. With a more nuanced understanding of the
background, project, and process, community members
would be in a better position to inform the project team of
related values and concerns in the planning stages-and
even to guide the project team. And they are more likely to
accept and integrate the value of a proposed or completed
project into their lives. The technology being introduced
may be safer, " greener, " and cleaner, but common sense
suggests that if the intended users don't see its direct value,
they will not accept it [6].
Engineers can't merely stop at surveying a community's
needs and concerns. They must invest time to share their
ideas and the reasoning behind them with the intended
community, however controversial. For a technology
project with humanitarian intent to be effective, engineers
need to discuss and demonstrate the ideas and prime
a conversation based on their comfort levels, buy-in, or
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The Bridge - Issue 3, 2023

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