EDITORIAL

Best Practice in Ecological Engineering?

Johannes Heeb* and Petter Jenssen (Co-Presidents IEES)

* c/o IEES
Bahnhofstrasse 2
CH-6110 Wolhusen
Switzerland

Dear readers,

"Best-practice" is booming. Today, any project manager who is not taking the principle of "best-practice" into account is losing his credibility. But if we try to find out what actually is behind this term, the discussion is soon slowing down. IEES has been participating in analysing the quality of projects and project implementation since the early 1990s. Like this, it has created various lists of quality criteria that serve as a basis for the development and implementation of projects. "Ecosystems Orientation", "Networking and Decentralisation", "Solar Orientation", "Considering Waste as a Resource" (i.e., "Closing Material Cycles"), but also "Systems Orientation" have been declared important cornerstones for the sustainable development of projects.

Quality was also a focus of many scientific discussions in the context of the Ecosummit 2007 in Beijing. In this global meeting, IEES contributed to the discussion by holding the symposium on "Best-Practices in Ecological Engineering". The results of this symposium, but also the participation of IEES in the European Union Projects BIOPROS (use of wastewater for the production o high efficient biomass production in short rotation plantations), SUSTAINAQUA (Development of sustainable aquaculture systems) and NETSSAF (Setting up a competence network for sustainable sanitation) show that the implementation of the quality criteria is not always that easy in every-day project work. They also show that "Best-Practice" is not always what it is supposed to be; and that even today, there is still a large need for information, education and capacity building for experts who want to realise sustainable environmental projects.

This is where this newsletter gets important. Persons from various special fields speak out on the topic of "Quality and Ecological Engineering". The articles show that the above mentioned lists of criteria include the oft-quoted triangle of sustainability "Environment-Economy-Society". However, they are also aiming at operationalising the quality discussion - something which is imperative.

Back to education: Here, IEES wants to play a more active role in the future. As an example, it has created a teaching CD on ecosan / sustainable sanitation together with various partners from development cooperation (ecosan curriculum 2.1, available at seecon international gmbh, Johannes Heeb, Bahnhofstrasse 2, CH-6110 Wolhusen, johannes.heeb@seecon.eu). Furthermore, it has also developed a modular training course (the ecosan learning lab: www.ecosanservices.org), which will qualify interested participants to put "Best-Practice"-projects into effect in the next few years. A similar programme is planned in the field of sustainable land management.

The importance of sanitation is recognized by the United Nations: the UN has declared the year 2008 the "International Year of Sanitation". In order to support this process, as well as to make sure that the resulting projects and activities fulfil the criteria of sustainability, the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance SuSanA was formed at the beginning of this year. It brings together actors from development cooperation, NGOs, financing institutions, but also international organisations like the UNDP or the UNESCO. IEES has contributed to forming of this alliance and is now participating as an active member in various working groups of this competence network. Thus, the next newsletter will deal with the topic of ecosan and sustainable sanitation.

Johannes Heeb and Petter Jenssen
IEES co-presidents