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

Abstract

The development of geoethics is at a turning point. After having strengthened its theoretical structure and launched new initiatives aimed at favouring the spread of geoethical thinking, geoethics must deal with some issues concerning the social organization of dominant cultures, the existing economic structures, and the political systems that govern the world. Nowadays geoethics must move towards the construction of a pedagogical proposal, which has a formative purpose, for future generations and the policy leaders, but also a political one, in the noble sense of the term, that is, concerning the action of citizens who take part in public life. The pedagogical and political project of geoethics will have to be founded on the principles of dignity, freedom, and responsibility on which to ground a set of values for global ethics in order to face planetary anthropogenic changes. Furthermore, this project must be inclusive, participatory, and proactive, without falling into simplistic criticism of the current interpretative and operational paradigms of the world, but always maintaining realism (therefore adherence to the reality of the observed facts) and a critical attitude towards the positive and negative aspects of any organizational socio-economic system of human communities. In our vision there can be no sustainability, adaptation, or transition in human systems that do not pass through an ethical regeneration of the human beings, who are aware of their inborn anthropocentric and anthropogenic perception/position and assume responsibility for the consequences of their actions impacting the Earth system. In fact, the ecological crisis is the effect of the crisis of humans who have moved away from their intimate human nature. Through this paper we want to enlarge disciplinary areas that should be investigated and discussed through the lens of geoethical thinking and propose geoethics for an ethical renewal of societies, making them more sustainable from a social, economic, and environmental perspectives.

Are We Ready for a Sustainable Development? A Survey among Young Geoscientists in Italy

“…Most of them (87.2%) were under 30; this means that most likely they will be part of the future geoscience departments for at least the next 20 to 30 years. This period (up to 2050) is crucial for the future of our society and the relationship between the environment and humankind [51], so is the conviction that their knowledge and interests are fundamental to connecting the Earth Sciences with sustainability issues and to building a pedagogical proposal for the new generations that moves toward geoethical principles [6].…”

“…Geoethics is defined as the "research and reflection on the values which underpin appropriate behaviors and practices, wherever human activities interact with the Earth system" by the International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG) [37]. Dealing with the social role and responsibility of geoscientists [5], geoethics can be considered a philosophical approach, a school of thought [38] that promotes appropriate practices to shape responsible and sustainable relationships between human activities and the Earth's systems [6].…”

“…The ambitious aim of IAPG is a pedagogical proposal based upon geoethics [6], with both formative and political purposes. In fact, both of these aspects should deal with the principles of geoethics, in order to face the big anthropogenic changes and ensure a more sustainable future.…”

“…The decision to have a national focus was supported not only by the unique opportunity to have a conference that brought together a perfect sample of people useful for the research, but also by the fact that in Italy, since the 1970s, a discussion on the ethics of geosciences has begun. In recent years, this has led to the birth of a discipline called Geoethics, whose major exponents include Italian geoscientists [5][6][7][8].…”

Phronesis at the Human-Earth Nexus: Managed Retreat

“…It is rooted in geoscientific knowledge (to understand Earth), emphasizes practical wisdom (phronesis), and tackles issues relating to responsible geosciences. Subsequently, geoethics can be structured for various application contexts and with different philosophical embedding (Bohle, 2021;Peppoloni and Di Capua, 2021).…”