I’ve been working on a difficult step in the process, and I’m venturing a long way from traditional engineering.  If this sounds too far away from ‘common sense’, please let me know.

The poorest decile of the Canadian population meet’s it’s needs in about 66% of a day (not including the fraction of paid employment that meets the needs of this decile).  I am not convinced that 100% of their needs are met, and if they have plenty of time to meet their needs, what is preventing them from using that time to meet needs?  I would guess and say that they have an Effectiveness of something near 66%, so that it would take nearly 24 hours per day per capita for all of their needs to be met.

But what is that ‘Effectiveness’ representing in society?  Some of it will be ‘-isms’, like racism, sexism, classism, etc. (community obstructions that prevent individuals, families, and communities from being able to meet their needs, regardless of the time used), and also like alcoholism (individual obstructions that prevent individuals, families, and communities from being able to meet their needs).  But some of it will be related to how an individual, family, or community thinks about how their needs will be met in the future – their confidence, if you will.  And how people interact with that confidence will change how people will assess their needs and may interfere with how they would meet specific needs.

People in poverty are concerned with day-to-day relationships, and live with hope.  They know that no matter what they do, their needs tomorrow may not be able to be met, regardless of their choices and actions today.  People in the middle are concerned with setting and achieving goals.  They know that meeting their goals will allow them to have their needs met, and at all times they know that meeting any specific want will not prevent them from achieving their goal.  People in affluence are concerned with legacy and traditions.  They know that their needs will always be met, and they know that they deserve to have their wants met.

Each of these perspectives makes individuals’ behaviour obstructionist in some ways.  There are many ‘middle class’ people who are living pay-check to pay-check.  There are many people in poverty who will buy goods that they perceive as luxuries, because it allows them to maintain their hope that they are better off than others.  And there are people in affluence that are capable of frittering away vast sums of wealth to create an image, ending in bankruptcy.  Each of these behaviours comes about from the confidence the individuals have in how their needs will be met in the future, and that belief prevents the individuals from acting in their long-term best interests.

Essentially, the effective strategies for meeting needs at one level of consumption may not be effective at another.  Just making more resources or time available does not necessarily cause people’s Actualized Quality of Life to increase – there has to be a way to change the strategies, too.

So, there will be a variety of obstructions that prevent people from meeting their needs effectively, and these obstructions will interact with different alternatives designs in different ways.  Sustainability Engineering can find the best alternatives that are available for any given problem in any given community, based on the resources available to the community in perpetuity, the skills and technology available within a community, and the obstructions within society that interfere with specific alternatives.

This may be able to be tied directly to Human Development, although that concept is distinctly separated from Sustainability Engineering, in that S.Eng. does not seek to change people’s behaviours directly, but instead must react to their behaviours.  Ideally, S.Eng. would be able to produce solutions that are adaptable as Human Development removes obstructions.  This will take more work to explore.