Mandate to Engineers Cites Concern for Ecology : Environment: Army Corps commander says public works must provide for preservation. Five-day conference will urge a balanced policy.

The head of the Army Corps of Engineers, in a major policy statement, is expected to say today that future public works projects must be engineered to protect and preserve the environment.

In an address before an environmental conference, Lt. Gen. Henry J. Hatch will advise engineers to look at major construction projects, such as dams, in an environmental as well as financial and technical context, according to an advance copy of his speech released Tuesday. In the past, the corps has come under strong criticism from environmental groups for destroying wetlands and other environmentally sensitive areas.

“I am now challenging our corps by insisting that simply overlaying an environmental sensitivity and consciousness on our developmental activities is insufficient to meet our nation’s and the world’s needs,” Hatch says in the speech. He cites the restoration of a river’s natural configuration as an ideal corps project.

Hatch is among several top governmental officials attending a five-day conference in Los Angeles that began Tuesday on how to balance economic needs with environmental concerns. The conference, sponsored by a nonprofit umbrella group of 115 organizations called the Global Tomorrow Coalition, will produce a report for Congress and the White House on how individuals, corporations and institutions in the United States can promote global economic progress without harming the environment for future generations.

The focus of the conference’s workshops and hearings is a report called, “Our Common Future,” completed in 1987 by a U.N.-formed panel on the world environment. The report’s recommendations included the possible creation of a new lending agency linked to the World Bank that would finance population control, repair environmental damage and invest in development that meets economic needs but also preserves natural resources.

“There are threatening trends in the world to the global environment and yet, at the same, time we must have economic growth and development to meet the human needs,” said Don Lesh, president of the coalition. “The only possible answer is not to suppress economic development but to change it qualitatively and substantively . . . by adding this sense of long-term obligation to the future and respect for ecological systems. Exactly how this is done is the subject matter of this event.”

Among those addressing the conference will be former President Jimmy Carter, Michael Deland, chairman of President Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality, and actor and environmental activist Dennis Weaver. Testimony will be taken from members of industry, academic and scientific institutions, religious groups and entertainment and communications leaders.

The 1,000 expected participants will be discussing such possible strategies as making the environment a consideration in national security planning and creating a world fund to be used by Third World nations for environmentally sound development projects.