Geoethics at EGU 2025

EGU - General Assembly 2025

27 April - 2 May 2025

The call for abstracts is open (deadline: 15 January 2025, 13:00 CET)

The General Assembly 2025 of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) is held at the Austria Center Vienna (ACV) in Vienna, Austria, from 27 April to 2 May 2025. The assembly is open to the scientists of all nations. The entire congress centre is fully accessible by wheelchairs.

IAPG co-sponsors the session EOS4.3 "Geoethics and Global Anthropogenic Changes: Geoscience Informing Policy-Making and Decision-Making", the session EOS2.3 "Climate and ocean communication and education: Experience, ethics, prospects", and the short course SC1.7 "Geoethical values, principles and behaviours: A participatory workshop".

How to submit and abstract: https://www.egu25.eu/programme/how_to_submit.html

EOS4.3: Geoethics and Global Anthropogenic Changes: Geoscience Informing Policy-Making and Decision-Making

Conveners

Silvia Peppoloni, Giuseppe Di Capua

Session description

Geoethics is essential for tackling global human-caused changes. It integrates ethical considerations into geoscience, improving policy and decision-making. Geoscientists must provide accurate, transparent, and unbiased data to policymakers, ensuring decisions reflect environmental, social, and economic impacts. In times of rapid climate change, resource overexploitation, increasing risks, and environmental damages, geoethics promotes sustainable, just, and respectful geoscience practices. This framework encourages scientifically sound, socially responsible, and environmentally sustainable actions, building trust between scientists, policymakers, and the public through transparency, accountability, and community engagement. In practical terms, integrating geoethics into policymaking and decision-making involves:

a) Building Trust: Highlighting the importance of transparency, accountability, and community engagement in fostering trust between scientists, policymakers, decision-makers, and the public.
b) Transparent Communication: Clearly sharing scientific findings and uncertainties with all stakeholders to support informed and democratic decision-making.
c) Inclusive Practices: Involving local communities, indigenous peoples, and marginalized groups to ensure their voices are heard and their rights respected in geoscientific work.
d) Sustainable Solutions: Focusing on long-term sustainability over short-term gains to ensure resource extraction and land use do not compromise future generations' needs.
e) Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Working with other fields like sociology, economics, and political science to address complex environmental issues holistically.
f) Geoscience Education: Training young people to understand Earth system complexities and prepare the next generation of geoscientists to address global challenges.

By fostering a culture of ethical responsibility, geoscience can guide actions that mitigate adverse effects, promote resilience, and contribute positively to society. Ultimately, geoethics strengthens the capacity of geoscience to inform and influence policy, fostering a more sustainable and equitable future for all.
This session aims to collect and stimulate discussions about ideas, initiatives, project outcomes, tools (including new technologies), and case studies that highlight the positive contributions (as well as exemplify failures) of geoscientists in informing the decision-making and policy-making processes.

This session is co-organized by ERE1/GM11/OS5/SSS12 and co-sponsored by International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG), the Commission on Geoethics of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) and the Chair on Geoethics of the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH) (www.geoethics.org).

Session EOS4.3

Session EOS2.3

Short Course SC1.7

Financial support
by EGU:

Click here

EOS4.3

IAPG sessions at EGU from 2012
(14 years of IAPG sessions on geoethics at the EGU General Assembly)

EOS2.3

EOS2.3: Climate and ocean communication and education: Experience, ethics, prospects

Conveners

David Crookall, Giuseppe Di Capua, Svitlana Krakovska, Rachel Wellman, Pimnutcha Promduangsri

Session description

“The truth is almost ten years since the Paris Agreement was adopted, the target of limiting long-term global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is hanging by a thread. The truth is the world is spewing emissions so fast that by 2030, a far higher temperature rise would be all but guaranteed. … Now is the time to mobilise, now is the time to act, now is the time to deliver. This is our moment of truth.” (Guterres, 2024)

One of the surest ways to mobilise, to act and deliver is through geo-education, geo-communication and geoethics. Humanity is dependent on both the climate and the ocean, and on their interaction. The danger of climate and ocean change can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to related threats, such as biodiversity, pollution, food security and fossil-fuel-driven war. Humanity appears to be in the grip of manic growth and ecological overshoot.

Far greater numbers of citizens than is currently the case need to increase their knowledge and communication skills in climate and ocean change and their underlying causes. This is achieved through a broad variety of methods: encounters, meetings, field trips, associations, classes, publications, peer pressure, workshops, geoethical awakening, social media, direct experience of extreme weather, association memberships, legal action and so on.

We welcome abstracts on a broad range of topics, from hands-on geo-communication of all kinds, through pedagogical ideas and practices, best practices, research, programme implementation and activism. Come and share your experience, your ideas, your anger, your vision, your research, your drive, your actions, your successes – from hands-on pedagogical ideas and practices, through geo-communication, curriculum matters and research, to policy and its implementation.

This session is co-organized by CL3.2/GM11/OS1/OS5 and co-sponsored by International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG) (www.geoethics.org).

SC1.7

SC1.7: Geoethical values, principles and behaviours: A participatory workshop

Conveners

David Crookall, Giuseppe Di Capua, Berill Blair, Pimnutcha Promduangsri

Session description

Values, principles and behaviours (VPBs) underlie geoethics and geoscience. Can we understand or build geoethics or conduct geoscience without reference to these VPBs? How do VPBs influence our professional practice in geoethics and in the geosciences? How are geoethical values, geoethical principles, geoethical behaviours and geoscience related?

Those are some of the questions that we wish to raise in our short course. Values include honesty, compassion, quality, objectivity, truth, respect, justice, peace and beauty. Principles generally make values explicit and are often embodied in ‘dictates’, such as thou shalt not kill, treat all people fairly, be supportive towards others, be humble in success and steadfast in adversity, take responsibility, etc. Behaviour is driven by both values and principles; it is a pattern of action (climate as opposed to weather, if you will). Examples might include striving for quality, being harsh on subordinates, being economical with the truth, being sensitive to others, using logic.

Often an ethical dilemma stems from two or more underlying value conflicts, such as individual identity and social value. It is not easy to understand the dynamics of such relations. Values clarification exercises are often used to enable people together to work through complex issues in which differing, contradictory or hidden values may influence beliefs, principles and behaviours, including decisions. Such exercises allow us to become more aware of the ways in which values relate to our geoethical and geoscience activities.

This Short Course will be conducted in a workshop format:
a. starting with short overviews of geoethics and of clarification exercises;
b. followed by a hands-on, small-group session; and
c. ending with a debriefing session and a discussion.

Both experts and novices in geoethical VPBs are welcome in this Short Course; teachers, researchers and students will benefit. If you wish to do a little preparation before the course, these may be useful:
https://www.lyellcollection.org/doi/10.1144/SP508-2020-191, or
https://presentations.copernicus.org/EGU21/EGU21-604_presentation.pdf

Please bring some blank paper and a pen. Also, bring your critical thinking skills and your powers of logic.

This session is co-organized by EOS4 and co-sponsored by International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG) (www.geoethics.org).

IAPG sessions from 2012

IAPG Sessions on Geoethics at EGU General Assemblies from 2012:

EGU 2012

NH9.8/EOS9 - Geoethics and natural hazards: communication, education and the science-policy-practice interface (co-organized).

Conveners: S. Peppoloni, J. Wasowski, P. Reitan, G. Devoli, S.W. Kieffer, E. Lindquist

EGU 2013

NH9.8 - Geoethics and natural hazards: the role and responsibility of the geoscientists.

Conveners: S. Peppoloni, S.W. Kieffer, J. Wasowski

EGU 2014

NH9.8 - Geoethics: Ethical Challenges In Communication, Geoeducation And Management of Natural Hazards.