Melchior Huijts
This week, a similarity between my aerospace background and sustainability engineering struck me. Although obvious, for both fields of engineering, rules and regulations have a huge impact. The set of requirements for an aircraft are very much dictated by rules and regulation from outside of the company, for safety reasons. Also, when designing a sustainability transition, the current rules and regulations have to be taken into account for a smooth change. Or, they have to be adapted, but this is a lot harder. It would help a lot for both fields if the set rules and regulations changed in advance or during the process!
Rules can be very unwanted, because they restrict the amount of solutions one can choose from for a problem. Sometimes these are the solutions that were favorited. In some cases they can counter transitions (technical and societal ones) that are even favourable for everyone. If rules are old they just do not yet incorporate the different aspects that innovations can have.
On the other hand, they can also help a lot. For instance with subsidies or by granting certain parties or ideas privileges over others. For instance, the rent of a shop that will sell goods for charity can be much lower by subsidies than that of a company to help the charity. They can steer changes in a certain direction.
This shows that rules and regulations can be very powerful in letting transitions succeed. The better the rules apply to a certain goal, the better an innovation that strives for this goal will be at getting there. It is therefore very important that, for instance during the Climate meeting in Paris now, binding rules and regulations are set. Since many companies only have profit as an interest, it should be the governments that show movement towards sustainability. It is the responsibility of governments to provide the best future for their nation, or all-together, the world. Long-term strategies are crucial in this sense and rules and regulations leading to this future are key in getting there. As said in previous columns, a sustainable future is not unthinkable without strict rules in favour of it, but the rules are powerful enough to make it go a lot faster and be more effective.
Stricter regulations on noise and emissions have pushed aviation towards good innovations, the same should be done on a global and political scale. I understand that it is complicated with all the different financial interests, but sustainable technologies would benefit greatly from this. Which will create new jobs, economic growth and a good future for next generations. The hole in the ozone layer has been effectively recuperating since strict rules and regulations were set completely abandoning CFC’s that caused the ozone depletion. Let’s show the same global cooperation again, for the good of our lovely earth and future generations.