The “Geoethical Promise”: A Proposal

The ‘Anthropocene Proposal’: A Possible Quandary and A Work-Around

“…A 'geoethical promise' was formulated some years ago to render geoethics operational in educational contexts [22]. It was updated in the Cape Town Statement on Geoethics [20], which was proposed on the occasion of the 35th International Geological Congress (2016) in Cape Town.…”

“…The outline builds on the spirit of the Cape Town Statement on Geoethics that situates geoethics as "a way of thinking and practising geosciences, within the wider context of the roles of geoscientists interacting with colleagues, society and the planet" [20,21]. Next, the 'geoethical promise' [22] is applied as an analytical tool (Section 3). The 'geoethical promise' is a Hippocratic-like oath for geoscientists that is embedded into the Cape Town Statement on Geoethics.…”

Geoethics as an Emerging Discipline: Perspectives, Ethical Challenges and Prospects

“…(1) natural, including mineral resources have specific internal properties that do not allow reflecting certain elements of their value in market prices or in any other similar utilitarian units of measure of value [29]; (2) geographic unevenness of distribution of mineral deposits on the planet requires using principally new global approaches to management and use of mineral resources, and to distribution of waste from development of such; 3exhaustion of mineral resources, limited volume and finiteness of such cause the issue of access, rights of currently living and future generations for mineral resources; (4) the geography of world mineral resource mining is expanding: it at least depends on availability of mineable mineral deposits in a given territory, and it to larger extent is determined by social conditions and requirement of nature protection legislation of the given territory; moving mining centres to poorly developed counties has become a tendency; (5) sustainable development assumes priority use of secondary resources, re-processing of which does not cause a destructive effect to all spheres of the Earth, which happens at initial (primary) extraction and processing of minerals. (6) the nature, landscapes, biological diversity of species, subsoil should be treated not simply as objects of protection in the territory of mining and processing of minerals, they are primarily the objects of heritage for future generations [30].…”

“…This is not just a niche area of research but extends to all geoscientists irrespective of their field (e.g., volcanology, engineering geology, hydrogeology, metamorphic petrology) and employment sector (e.g., industry, academia, public sector). Geoethics is particularly concerned with the way humans relate to the geosphere [4]. At the same time, Geoethics focuses on how geologists develop their academic and professional work which impacts in sustainability [5].…”

Furthering Ethical Requirements for Applied Earth Science

“…Existence of a vibrant geoethical identity throughout our professional community can only serve to strengthen public support for our work and professional recommendations. In this essay, we discuss the idea described in Ellis and Haff [2009] or in Matteucci et al [2014] of an 'oath' or 'promise', respectively.…”