Introduction: geoethics goes beyond the geoscience profession

Abstract

This is the second volume focused on geoethics published as a Special Publication of the Geological Society of London, a significant step forward in which authors address the maturation of geoethics, a maturity that has strengthened its theoretical foundations in recent years and reached more insight in its reflections. 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. What is clear is that geoethics has a distinction in the geoscientific community for discussing ethical, social, and cultural implications of geoscience knowledge, research, practice, education, as well as communication. This provides a common ground for confronting ideas, experiences, and proposals on how geosciences can provide 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.

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

“…The Geoethical Promise and CTSG are important not only for the geoscience community but also for society as a whole [43]. Indeed, in recent years, geoethical thinking has spread to other techno-scientific disciplines [38].…”

Geoethics in the Scenario of the Geological Society in Brazil

“…It addresses firstly the geoscience community but has important significance also to society, as it synthesizes some values that must guide human actions with respect to the Earth system [14].…”

“…This, the motivations, and actions to combat global anthropic changes and their intense impacts on the planet need to be governed by an ethical framework capable of merging a solid conceptual structure with practical approaches based on geoscientific knowledge, since Geoethics has constantly featured in geoscientific debates. [14] In other countries where geology also has a fundamental role in the economy, like the USA, the scenario remains far from ideal:…”

Ethical issues and legal principles regarding joint management of shared river basins in the context of climate change and water scarcity in the Iberian Peninsula

“…The analysis of the complexity of transnational river basin management in the context of climate change and associated water scarcity, brings to the spot light major ethic challenges on water governance (Groenfeldt and Schmidt 2013;Marone and Bohle 2020). These challenges fall within the scope of geoethics, an area of research that deals with "values which underpin appropriate behaviours and practices, wherever human activities interact with the Earth system" (Di Capua et al 2021). Differently from other publications on geoethics, the current text does not address mainly the responsibilities of geoscientists (Peppoloni et al 2019), such as hydrologists or geologists, but rather the responsibility of public authorities when they act as decision makers, authorising, conditioning or supervising the operators of economic activities which use water bodies or which benefit from water services.…”