News from IAPG-Peru

IAPG-Peru held its 1st Coordination Meeting on 15 January 2016 at the Auditorium of the INGEMMET (Instituto Geológico Minero y Metalúrgico) in Lima.

After a talk about the 2015 activities of the section, our Peruvian colleagues discussed about several plans for 2016:

1) MINERLIMA 2016 (Second Internacional Exhibition of Minerals in Peru).
2) Creation of the section on Geoethics, Geological Culture and Society within the Peruvian Geological Society.
3) 2nd Colloquium on Geoethics to be included in the Peruvian Geological Congress.

A detailed report (in Spanish) of the 1st Coordination Meeting of IAPG-Peru is available at:
http://geoeticaperu.blogspot.pe/2016/01/1-reunion-de-coordinacion-de-la-iapg.html

IAPG-Peru Blog

An important initiative of IAPG-Egypt

The Egyptian section of the IAPG - International Association for Promoting Geoethics is actively involved in the organization of the 1st INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE INSTITUTE OF AFRICAN RESEARCH AND STUDIES (IARS). 25-26 May 2016, Cairo (Egypt).

The Conference is organized by the Institute of African Research and Studies (IARS), in collaboration with the Cairo University, Foreign Affairs Ministry of Egypt, Arabian Scientific Research Organization (ASRO), International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG) and African Network for Geo-Education (ANGE).

IAPG organizes a round-table on geoethics for young geoscientists.

The main themes of the Conference are:

I) Natural Resources in Africa - New Perspectives.
II) Education in Africa - New Perspectives.
III) Community, Culture and health in Africa.
IV) Future of Conflict and Peace building in Africa.

The Conference will be a platform for initiating a new vision in co-operation with African countries and improving relation through new perspectives by discussing the current situation and challenges, and will seek to share experience and best practices to promote the Egyptian role in Africa.
The main conclusions of the Conference will be reflected and incorporated into the declaration of the Institute to be considered and adopted by the participants at the Conference.

The working languages of the Conference will be: Arabic, English.

For more information about abstracts submission and registration visit the website: https://africaninstitutesite.wordpress.com/

Other IAPG events

Ethics of Geomechanics: 
A Thriving Discipline and Its Growing Responsibility

by Mehrdad Soltanzadeh

Mehrdad Soltanzadeh

Geomechanics Advisor
PetroGem Inc.
Calgary, Alberta (Canada)
email: has899@mail.usask.ca


Disclaimer: the views expressed in this paper solemnly engage the author

Picture Credit: Surficial bitumen spill close to a major thermal operation site in Alberta, Canada (source: o.canada.com)

During the last two decades, reservoir geomechanics has been showered with attention from petroleum industry, academia and regulatory institutions mainly because modern technologies, new perspectives and economic opportunities have led to exponential growth of aggressive underground operations such as massive hydraulic fracturing, waste disposal, underground storage of greenhouse gases and in-situ thermal projects, all calling for geomechanics not just to help them with increasing their efficiency but also to answer some crucial questions on their safety and potential risks such as excessive ground deformation, fluid leakage, air, soil and water contamination and induced seismicity. In fact, none of these concerns are quite new to the world but they have never been operated in a scale as large as today's plus that, in the current sensitive social platform, their economic, sociopolitical and environmental importance can hardly be overlooked. This popularity has come with a huge load of professional and ethical responsibility for geomechanics as a discipline that is primarily responsible for assessment of these risks.

When it comes to the application of geosciences, relevant ethical issues will fall under the umbrella of "geoethics", a developing branch of ethics that is much younger and less famous than its celebrity cousin, bioethics. While growing to adolescence, theoretical and practical aspects of geoethics seem to receive less attention from the technical community (including geomechanics experts) in comparison to the environmental activists, ethics philosophers, politicians and business managers. Nevertheless, with its crucial role in assessment of risks and concerns, joining the discourse of geoethics is an excellent opportunity for geomechanics to prove its commitment to the welfare of the society and environment. To accomplish this task, geomechanics community (that includes regulatory agencies, academia, and industry) along with other parties need to think of establishing a comprehensive framework that, at the very least, will include the following elements:

Ethical Platform: Developing or adopting an ethical platform on how to treat problems that are imposing risks on the environment and society and how to define a balance between economic development, preservation, and social prosperity is the first step. Professional integrity and scientific honesty are obviously inseparable parts of such a platform but it will definitely need to be much more comprehensive than a general code of ethics for a specific profession.

Acknowledging Uncertainty: Open and clear recognition of the existing uncertainties in different processes of data acquisition, modeling, design, operation and monitoring is critical. All the decisions made by geomechanics experts involve a (remarkable) level of uncertainty and, consequently, all the relevant risks must be assessed by bringing the uncertainty into account. Any analysis needs to clearly acknowledge and address all the different potential scenarios that may put the society and environment and at risk and provide the best possible estimation of their probability to the decision makers and public. Different obstacles that may make this process difficult are scientific prejudice and overconfidence, technical ignorance, communication inefficiency, and lack of professional integrity.

Regulations: Standard design, operational, and monitoring codes need to be developed by regulatory institutes in collaboration with the scientific community and industry to ensure the minimum requirements for safety and preservation are fulfilled. Similar to other disciplines (take the field of ‘construction’ as an example), coming up with such regulatory guidelines will need investment from all the parties especially the governments and intergovernmental agencies. These investments are used to form specialized research institutes with the duty of providing the best-practice guidelines. Enforcing ultra-conservative advices backed up with justifications such as "lack of knowledge" or "immaturity of science" usually is not a smart long-term move. With such lame excuses in effect, several of the currently existing developments in the world would never have had a chance to happen. The main role of regulatory institutes is taking the lead on developing knowledge, science and technology whenever necessary.

Education: Training on environmental, social and economic aspects of relevant risks and their potential impacts is crucial. Such training should be a part of a systemic education in academia and industry for geomechanics practitioners. Different elements of ethics, especially geoethics must be a part of such educational system. It is important to ensure that all the practitioners are familiar with the codes of conduct through proper education. Also, professional associations who are regulating the practice of the discipline need to show more profession-specific attention to education and qualification of their members.

Scientific Freedom: Importance of freedom of research and science cannot be emphasized enough. All the involved sectors need to ensure the circulation of knowledge is not bottlenecked for any unnecessary reason such as politics or higher profit. Practitioners need to feel "free" in expressing their opinion on the matters concerning the society and environment regardless of the outcomes. It is important that proper whistleblower policies will be in effect in all the areas with potential georisks.

Transparency: Without a minimum level of transparency in providing details on different processes of design, execution, monitoring and observation, preventing undesired situation will be very difficult. Along with respecting the interests of the investors, industry needs to ensure that confidentiality does not act as a barrier for sharing crucial information with public.

Public Communication: Communicating with the society and media can be quite a challenge for the technical communities including reservoir geomechanics due to their complex physical nature. Nevertheless, this cannot be used as an excuse for not providing understandable explanation for the issues related to the welfare of the environment and society. Geomechanics needs to come up with creative methods to explain itself to the general audience with minimum technical knowledge.

Some of the addressed points may already be in place and practiced to some extent but it is still hard to overlook the urgent need for their development and improvement. Fortunately, several other disciplines (for instance, "oil and gas transportation") have been wrestling with similar issues for their entire life and their experiences may be effectively used to ensure the practice of geomechanics is aligned with ethics and professional integrity and welfare of the society and environment.


Some Relevant Links

Geoethics and geological culture: awareness, responsibility and challenges.

Geoethics: Ethical Challenges and Case Studies in Earth Sciences.

Geoethics: the Role and Responsibility of Geoscientists.

Handling of Human-Geosphere Intersections.

IAPG Symposia on Geoethics at the 35th IGC
Call for Abstracts: Deadline is approaching

The deadline to submit an abstract for the 35th International Geological Congress (IGC) is approaching (31 January 2016, extended: 29 February 2016).

International Association for Promoting Geoethics (http://www.geoethics.org) promotes 2 symposia:

Geoethics: general aspects and case-studies
(Theme: Global Geoscience Professionalism and Geoethics)
Convenership: Giuseppe Di Capua, Peter Bobrowsky, Martin Bohle, John Geissman, Silvia Peppoloni
The conveners invite abstracts on both practical and theoretical aspects of Geoethics, including case studies. The aim of the session is to develop ethical and social perspectives on the challenges arising from human interaction with natural systems, to complement technical approaches and solutions, and to help to define an ethical framework for geoscientists' activities.

Full description of this symposium at: 
http://www.35igc.org/SymposiumDetail/40/GEOETHICS-GENERAL-ASPECTS-AND-CASE-STUDIES?theme=Global%20Geoscience%20Professionalism%20and%20Geoethics&themeId=13

Geoethical perspectives on meeting the resource needs of future generations
(Theme: Resourcing Future Generations)
This session is a joint initiative IAPG - International Association for Promoting Geoethics, GSL - Geological Society of London, EFG - European Federation of Geologists and EGS - EuroGeoSurveys.
Convenership: Silvia Peppoloni, Nic Bilham, Vitor Correia, Luca Demicheli
The conveners invite papers addressing how geoethical perspectives can be brought to bear on the challenges of sustainably meeting future demand for georesources, including energy, groundwater and numerous mineral commodities.

Full description of this symposium at: 
http://www.35igc.org/SymposiumDetail/276/Geoethical-perspectives-on-meeting-the-resource-needs-of-future-generations?theme=Resourcing%20Future%20Generations&themeId=53


In case you are interested in submit an abstract in these symposia, please read carefully how to do at:
http://www.35igc.org/Verso/211/Submit-an-Abstract

Download the abstract format at: 
http://www.35igc.org/uploads/35IGC_abstract_template_final_29062015.doc

We hope you join us in Cape Town and in case you have questions about these 2 symposia, please don't hesitate to contact the IAPG staff sending an email to: iapgeoethics@aol.com

See you in South Africa!

Cape Town (South Africa)

Picture of Cape Town from: 
http://www.imperiapost.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Cape-Town.jpg

The IAPG section of Iran

Welcome the IAPG section of Iran!

The section will work under the responsibility of Vahid Ahadnejad (Geology Department, Payame Noor University, Tehran) and Sedigheh Seifilaleh (University of Tehran, Institute of Geophysics).

Vahid Ahadnejad 

Vahid is a geoscientist and is one of the founders of the National Geoscience Database of Iran (NGDIR). Furthermore, he was manager of the geological laboratories at the Tarbiat Moallem University of Tehran. He is working at Payame Noor University in the academic staff. In 2013, Vahid founded the "Journal of Tethys" an international open access journal for the publication of original research in all aspects of earth science. Recently, he has published a book in Persian language titled "Urban Geology".

Sedigheh Seifilaleh

Sedigheh studied Nuclear Physics at the University of Kermanshah (Razi) and Geophysics at the University of Tehran. She completed her Master's degree in Geophysics (Seismology) in 2013.

Iran is located in one of the most geologically hazardous area in the world. This has lead to a close relationship between geology and society. There are a lots of graduate students in geology that deal with earth sciences related jobs and so it is important to involve them in ethical and social aspects of geoscience research, practice and education. Geoethics is an unknown field for Iranian scientists and it could be potentially attractive for them. IAPG-Iran will favour the promotion of geoethics in Iranian geoscience community.

Other IAPG national sections: http://www.geoethics.org/sections.html

Geoethics and the Anthropocene

by Martin Bohle

Martin Bohle

Directorate General Research and Innovation
European Commission
Brussels (Belgium)
email: martin.bohle@skynet.be


Disclaimer: the views expressed in this paper solemnly engage the author

Picture Credit: Stephanie Flude (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

Abstract

The making of the Anthropocene is about altering how human activities and the bio-geosphere intersect. Geoethics provide an orientation how that anthropogenic global change process should happen. For a definition of the notion "Geoethics", please see end-note.

Forward
This essay prepares my keynote "Geoethik: Richtschnur für's Anthropozän" at the meeting "nANO meets water VII". The meeting is organized by the Fraunhofer UMSICHT Institute (Oberhausen, Germany) on 18th February 2016 (see: http://nano-water.de/flyer/nano-meets-water-VII.pdf). The essay extends some reflections from my paper: Martin Bohle "Handling of Human Geosphere Intersections" (Geosciences 2016, 6, 3; doi:10.3390/geosciences6010003)

Introduction
To put the notions "Geoethics" and "Anthropocene" into a mutual context, this essay applies the notions "engineering" and "anthropogenic global change", and reflects on the "noosphere" - the ensemble of people-people interactions and their "shared mental concepts". It is within the "noosphere" that people conceive "how to shape the world?"
The notion Anthropocene implies that processes of the geo-biosphere and processes in the noosphere intersect. Ethics appraises human behavior; geoethics concern human behavior in matters that involve the process of the bio-geosphere. The making of the anthropocene, be it either as a collateral effect of humankind's engineering or an intended outcome of alterations of the noosphere or the bio-geosphere, involve ethical issues. These issues are known, they are habitual to engineering and other professional work, although their application case may be new.  In that situation, what provides orientations how to make the Anthropocene? What is particular to geoethics?

About "Engineering"
To simplify; humankind is an engineering species. Biological evolution of people came in pair with tool-making capacity. Prehistoric and historical evolution of humankind meant to modify environments to appropriate resources [1, 2, 3, 4]. During the last century the number of people on Earth, the patterns of their consumption of resources, and the engineering of their environments together accumulate in a process of anthropogenic global change [5, 6, 7] leading to the Anthropocene. Now, re-engineering of production systems, consumption patterns and related intersections of human activities with the biotic and abiotic environment deemed to be a necessary endeavor [8], and is a central feature of the anthropogenic global change process.
Considering engineering in a philosophical context: (i) engineering is the intended, value-driven change of environments with the purpose to facilitate production and reproduction; for example infrastructures like shore defenses, which visibly interact with the geosphere; (ii) engineering includes designing production systems, urban dwellings and consumption patterns that couple human activity with the geosphere through cycles of matter and energy; (iii) engineering is about how people govern the appropriation of living and non-living resources from the environment in view of their value systems, cultural choices and lifestyles.

Anthropogenic Global Change
It is obvious that people are altering Earth [9]; it is debated "since when" and "to what degree?" Humankind's activity has left traces in the geological record since the onset of agriculture in Neolithic ages [10, 11]. The industrial revolution has printed a signal into the geological records at a planetary scale [12, 13]. Since some decades, humankind's economic activity intersects the geosphere in a more general manner, either directly or mediated by the biosphere. The respective geological records scale are forming [14] at a planetary. So far, this kind of "terraforming" was a collateral of the human economic activities to appropriate resources [15, 16, 17].
Anthropogenic global change is a historical process. It is linking how people interact with features of the planetary geo-biosphere, which are undertaken to sustain a population of now several billion people. This feature advocates renaming the present times Anthropocene, the time when humankind's activities modulate state and development path of planet Earth. Thus, it is the paradigm of present times that the production and consumption pattern of humankind causes fluxes of matter that modify earth-system dynamics. Going beyond any scientific meaning, the notion Anthropocene conveys a double message [5, 18]. First, that the development paths of humankind's history and natural earth-systems intersect. Second, that to understand global processes, it requires synthesizing social sciences, humanities and natural sciences [10, 16, 17, 20].
Regarding how production systems and consumption patterns are organized in the context of anthropogenic global change, the guiding paradigms are "adaptation" and "mitigation", or named differently "adjustment to change" and "dovetailing of processes". These paradigms are conventional; they fit well into the development path of engineering endeavors of the last centuries. However, their conscious application on a planetary scale is without precedent [21]. In this sense, people face a double habitual context. The available technological means, scientific understanding, and resources confine the engineering efforts. Within these limits, world-views determine the choices. Thus, the habitual ethical questions that engineering and geoscience imply in a general professional context now are put into a much more complex societal context. Thus, the making of the Anthropocene is as much a process of finding "shared subjective insights" [22], as it results from the "material" intersection of humankind's economic activities and the bio-geosphere [12, 13].   
To recall the obvious; when making choices people are driven by both, their world-views and preferences and their insights into societal, technical or natural processes. Within that context, the attitude of people towards risk, uncertainties, perception of facts and theories is different. People's choices vary with the context [23, 24], e.g. whether the own person, the kin, or the own group is concerned, or whether an action is immediate, has happened, or will happen in the future. The manner how the debate on climate change is evolving shows that this debate is about world-views. Specialists, decision makers, and people ponder what are hypotheses, theories or facts. It is discussed how to handle uncertainty or hazards or whether to consider benefits for other people, in the past or for future generations [25]. Going beyond concerns like "whether it is functioning", people intuitively tend to opt for what they consider as "right" or "worth" in the context of their individual world-view. When people are debating opportunities, change or risks then much of the debate is about "virtue" and what course of action is "worthwhile" [2, 26]; e.g. when appraising impacts and benefits during planning, construction and operation.
Societies abundantly apply geoscience for their economic activities. Crafts-person, technicians, architects, and engineers apply geoscience know-how when engineering environments or creating artifacts, e.g. extraction of minerals, the laying foundations for buildings, or managing floodplains. As experience with climate change showed, the cause-effect relations of the human geosphere intersections are difficult to determine. Many people may not recognize how much geoscience know-how is needed to gain insight into the interaction of human activities and processes in the geosphere. Notwithstanding any lack of conscious insight, the noosphere of contemporary societies and the geosphere are well coupled. The ensemble of people-people interactions and the application of their "shared mental concepts" effect the geosphere once put to into practice through engineering.
Now that people have to handle anthropogenic global change, they have to choose how to re-engineer on a planetary scale the production systems, consumption patterns, and their natural, technical or cultural environments. Although such re-engineering would fit into the human culture, engineering global systems differ from previous engineering endeavors. The scale and complexity of the endeavor are different, because anthropogenic global change - e.g. climate change - prescribes global commons for all people, whether the change is collateral or purposeful.
Engineering anthropogenic global change is loaded with implicit societal issues to an unprecedented level because of the impact on all people. On one hand it is intended to engineer systems that have non-linear dynamics with feedback. Such systems exhibit chaotic dynamics that is difficult to forecast. Therefore, non-intended and counter-intuitive system behavior is likely. This feature renders design, implementation, and operation of engineering works challenging [27, 28]. On the other hand, when in the past engineering could not tackle a problem successfully then emigration was an option. Evidently, leaving Earth is not an option. However, "internal migration" to avoid the regional impact of the anthropogenic global change is an option that already is depicted by some as an emerging feature. That dimension of "non-escape" sharpens the ethical issues of engineered anthropogenic change.

Summary
Our species has acquired the power to engineer planet Earth. Anthropogenic global change is about engineering the intersections of human economic activities and the geosphere in function of people's world-views and preferences. As any engineering work, therefore, anthropogenic global change is subject to the human value-systems, which underpin people's world-views and preferences. In that context "geoethics" extends the application case of human value-systems.
The overarching societal matters of anthropogenic global change are value-loaded, e.g. how to appropriate and distribute natural resources for what cost, accepted side-effects, and with what risk of further collateral effects. These ethical issues seem familiar regarding their general nature. However, their complexity has no precedence, simply because of the number of people with different world-views and preferences who will be subject to consequences of the choices made. In that particular context "geoethics" means to extend the range of applied ethics to new subjects.
People will appraise anthropogenic global change through their preferences, values, and world-views; and then will decide and react accordingly. To that end, the practitioners, professionals, and researchers who understand how intersections of human activity and geosphere function to bring anthropogenic global change, have to share their professional insights with decision makers and layperson and to debate value statements, world-views, and preferences. In that context "geoethics" is about the ethics of expert advice.
If anthropogenic global change gets addressed as an engineering challenge, then the ethics of risk-taking, managing uncertainties or revising options will be needed in a context of applied geoscience [29]. Ethical dilemmas such as conflicting values, uneven distribution of risks, impacts, losses, and benefits, or collateral impacts like exposure to unexpected side-effects. Debates will be vigorous, e.g. whether a side-effect was to be expected or was intentional. The related range of scientific, technical and economic matters include their particular ethical issues namely whether scientific and engineering choices are professional "sound". In that particular context "geoethics" is about professional ethics.
So far people did not intend to modify planetary fluxes of matter and energy, although they were aware of the effect of their cumulative activities on the biosphere. People ignored the intersection of human economic activity with the geosphere. Nowadays having lost innocence,  anthropogenic global change is an intentional act [30, 31]. In that particular context "geoethics" is about taking responsibility.


References

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2. Tickell, C. Societal responses to the Anthropocene. Philos. Trans. A. Math. Phys. Eng. Sci. 2011, 369 (1938), 926–932 DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2010.0302.

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12. Ellis, E. C.; Goldewijk, K. K.; Siebert, S.; Lightman, D.; Ramankutty, N. Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 2010, 19 (5), 589–606 DOI: 10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00540.x.

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14. Zalasiewicz, J.; Waters, C. N.; Williams, M.; Barnosky, A. D.; Cearreta, A.; Crutzen, P.; Ellis, E.; Ellis, M. a.; Fairchild, I. J.; Grinevald, J.; et al. When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal. Quat. Int. 2015 DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2014.11.045.

15. Lewis, S. L.; Maslin, M. A. Defining the Anthropocene. Nature 2015, 519 (7542), 171–180 DOI: 10.1038/nature14258.

16. Braje, T. J.; Erlandson, J. M. Looking forward, looking back: Humans, anthropogenic change, and the Anthropocene. Anthropocene 2013, 4, 116–121 DOI: 10.1016/j.ancene.2014.05.002.

17. Folke, C.; Jansson, Å.; Rockström, J.; Olsson, P.; Carpenter, S. R.; Stuart Chapin, F.; Crépin, A. S.; Daily, G.; Danell, K.; Ebbesson, J.; et al. Reconnecting to the biosphere. Ambio 2011, 40 (7), 719–738 DOI: 10.1007/s13280-011-0184-y.

18. Bohle, M. Recording the Onset of the Anthropocene. In Engineering Geology for Society and Territory - Volume 7; Giorgio Lollino, Massimo Arattano, Marco Giardino, Ricardo Oliveira, Silvia Peppoloni, Ed.; Springer, 2014; pp 161–163.

19. Weisz, H.; Clark, E. Society-nature coevolution: Interdisciplinary concept for sustainability. Geogr. Ann. Ser. B Hum. Geogr. 2011, 93 (4), 281–287.

20. Bergthaller, H.; Emmett, R.; Johns-Putra, A.; Kneitz, A.; Lidström, S.; McCorristine, S.; Pérez Ramos, I.; Phillips, D.; Rigby, K.; Robin, L. Mapping Common Ground: Ecocriticism, Environmental History, and the Environmental Humanities. Environ. Humanit. 2014, 5, 261–276.

21. Palsson, G.; Szerszynski, B.; Sörlin, S.; Marks, J.; Avril, B.; Crumley, C.; Hackmann, H.; Holm, P.; Ingram, J.; Kirman, A.; et al. Reconceptualizing the “Anthropos” in the Anthropocene: Integrating the Social Sciences and Humanities in Global Environmental Change Research. Environ. Sci. Policy 2012, 1–11 DOI: 10.1016/j.envsci.2012.11.004.

22. Biermann, F.; Betsill, M. M.; Vieira, S. C.; Gupta, J.; Kanie, N.; Lebel, L.; Liverman, D.; Schroeder, H.; Siebenhüner, B.; Yanda, P. Z.; et al. Navigating the anthropocene: the Earth System Governance Project strategy paper. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 2010, 2 (3), 202–208 DOI: 10.1016/j.cosust.2010.04.005.

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24. Sutherland, W. J.; Bellingan, L.; Bellingham, J. R.; Blackstock, J. J.; Bloomfield, R. M.; Bravo, M.; Cadman, V. M.; Cleevely, D. D.; Clements, A.; Cohen, A. S.; et al. A collaboratively-derived science-policy research agenda. PLoS One 2012, 7 (3), 3–7 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0031824.

25. Aufenvenne, P.; Egner, H.; Elverfeldt, K. von. On Climate Change Research, the Crisis of Science and Second-order Science. 10(1): 120–129. Constr. Found. 2014, 10 (1), 120–129.

26. Ehrlich, P. R.; Kareiva, P. M.; Daily, G. C. Securing natural capital and expanding equity to rescale civilization. Nature 2012, 486 (7401), 68–73 DOI: 10.1038/nature11157.

27. Allenby, B. R.; Sarewitz, D. The techno-human condition; The MIT Press, 2011.

28. Banerjee, B. The Limitations of Geoengineering Governance In A World of Uncertainty. Stanford J. Law Sci. Policy 2011, 240 (May), 15–36.

29. Peppoloni, S., Di Capua, G. (eds.) Geoethics: the role and responsibility of geoscientists. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 419, ISBN 978-1-86239-726-2.

30. Ellis, M. A.; Trachtenberg, Z. Which Anthropocene is it to be? Beyond geology to a moral and public discourse. Earth’s Futur. 2014, n/a – n/a DOI: 10.1002/2013EF000191.

31. Corner, A. J.; Pidgeon, N. F. Geoengineering the Climate: The Social and Ethical Implications.: EBSCOhost. Environ. Sci. Policy Sustain. Dev. 2010, 52 (1), 24–37 DOI: 10.1080/00139150903479563.

Note

Geoethics consists of research and reflection on the values which underpin appropriate behaviours and practices, wherever human activities interact with the geosphere. Geoethics deals with the ethical, social and cultural implications of Earth Sciences education, research and practice, providing a point of intersection for Geosciences, Sociology, Philosophy and Economy. Geoethics represents an opportunity for Geoscientists to become more conscious of their social role and responsibilities in conducting their activity. Geoethics is a tool to influence the awareness of society regarding problems related to geo-resources and geo-environment 
(IAPG - International Association for Promoting Geoethics: http://www.geoethics.org)

The IAPG is recognized as an Associated Organisation of GIRAF

The IAPG has been recognized as an Associated Organisation of the Geoscience Information in Africa - Network (GIRAF).

The mission of GIRAF - Network (http://www.giraf-network.org/) is to support that knowledge-based geoscience information contributes to improve the environmental & economic prosperity of the people in Africa.

The aims of GIRAF are:

• Build a pan-African geoscience information knowledge network of geological surveys, universities and companies.
• Exchange and share geoscience information and good practice.
• Bring together relevant African authorities, national experts and stakeholders in geoscience information.
• Make Africa a more active part of the international geoscience information community.
• Stimulate and support cross-border geoscience information projects in Africa.
• Gather and review up-to-date feedback on the actual situation of geoscience information status and progress in Africa.
• Review the progress of the GIRAF network as set up at the 1st workshop in Namibia 2009.
• In the long run improve the way geoscience information contributes to improve the health and prosperity of the people in Africa.

Read more about the affiliations and agreements of the IAPG

Agreement on Cooperation between GEVAS and the IAPG

GEVAS Red Argentina and the IAPG - International Association for Promoting Geoethics have signed an Agreement on Cooperation on 4 January 2016.

The agreement expresses a mutual desire to promote coordinated activities and events discussing the ethical, social and cultural implications of geosciences and initiatives enhancing the application of geoethics to the study and management of geohazards and to their impact on society, environment and human health.

The agreement has been signed by Silvia Peppoloni (IAPG Secretary General) and Elizabeth Rovere (President of GEVAS Red Argentina). Elizabeth is co-coordinator of the section IAPG-Argentina.

GEVAS is a civil, not-for-profit, Association that was legally recognized in 2013. The objectives of GEVAS are related to promote actions aimed at developing the "Best Practices" for interaction between Geosciences and Society.

GEVAS is devoted at facing the social and environmental impact of volcanic hazard and other geohazards. Particular objectives are related to fostering transfer of scientific knowledge to society, to collaborate with public and private institutions involved in risk management, to perform basic scientific research, to develop international networks and communications on geohazards, to provide technical support to different levels of actors (scientific, politics, society in general, educational, public health), and to encourage local communities from affected areas to participate and create resilient social behaviors.


Read more about IAPG affiliations and agreements at: http://www.geoethics.org/affiliations.html