About this title - Geoethics: Status and Future Perspectives

Abstract

This is the second volume focused on geoethics published by the Geological Society of London. This is a significant step forward in which authors address the maturation of geoethics. The field of geoethics is now ready to be introduced outside the geoscience community as a logical platform for global ethics that addresses anthropogenic changes. Geoethics has a distinction in the geoscientific community for discussing ethical, social and cultural implications of geoscience knowledge, research, practice, education and communication. This provides a common ground for confronting ideas, experiences and proposals on how geosciences can supply additional service to society in order to improve the way humans interact responsibly with the Earth system. This book provides new messages to geoscientists, social scientists, intellectuals, law- and decision-makers, and laypeople. Motivations and actions for facing global anthropogenic changes and their intense impacts on the planet need to be governed by an ethical framework capable of merging a solid conceptual structure with pragmatic approaches based on geoscientific knowledge. This philosophy defines geoethics.

Geoethics to Start Up a Pedagogical and Political Path towards Future Sustainable Societies

“…The current structure of geoethics is the result of a process of cultural intra-professional development within geosciences started in 2010 [13]. The use of the word geoethics predates this year, but it is outside the scope of this paper to provide a history of geoethics and even less an exegesis of the meanings attributed to it.…”

“…Geoethics [1,2], precisely because of its theoretical structure that is rooted in the geoscientific knowledge of the characteristics and dynamics of complex social-ecological systems [3][4][5][6], must question itself on the idea of a future human civilization, being nourished by ideals and carried out through a scientifically founded operational pragmatism. This implies that studies in the field of geoethics are enriched by and integrated with economic, sociological, legal, and human sciences reflections [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. These reflections must not distort the essence of geoethics [2,[16][17][18] but must complete its operational interface, so that from a long-term cultural project, geoethics can more rapidly transform into a pedagogical program and a political manifesto to also act and become effective in the short term.…”