Are we ready for an ecological transition? A survey between young geoscientists in Italy

Abstract

<p>During the last decades, especially the last one, the importance of geoethics has been highlighted by the major consciousness about the role of geoscience, and  geoscientists, on environmental and social challenges that the world has to face.This awareness has been raised in accordance with the 17 sustainable development goals of the UNESCO 2030 Agenda. This document led to the wider popularity of the concept of education for sustainability (EfS) as an evolution of what was formerly known as environmental education (EE) or education for sustainable development (ESD). The main purpose of EfS is to promote an inter and trans-disciplinary knowledge, capable of framing the complexity of the current crisis.In one of the last publications about geoethics (Di Capua, Peppoloni 2019) the authors encourage geoscientists to be aware of the geological community role and to reflect on the ethical responsibility that this implies. Moving from this call for engagement, this study focuses on the Italian situation.Does the Italian Earth Sciences community have enough knowledge and a real shared interest on sustainability, in order to shift to a geoethical perspective? This study shows the results of a survey conducted between the participants of BeGeo21, the first Italian national congress dedicated to young geoscientists (MSc and PhD), held in Napoli in October 2021. The data analysis shows that the majority of respondents has scarce knowledge about sustainability and the 17 SDGs and only a few had the possibility to attend courses and seminars about these topics in their department. Nonetheless, the importance of the sustainability, and thus geoethic, point of view for the future of Geosciences is well recognized and there’s a wide request for our higher education institutions to increase the number of activities connected to EfS.</p><p> </p>