Towards a Global Geoscience Initiative – Town Halls
Sponsors: American Geological Institute (AGI), British Geological Survey (BGS), Geological Society of America (GSA) and Geological Society of London (GSL)
Background: The activities associated with the International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE) will shortly come to an end. Looking back over the three years of IYPE, there have been many notable successes, particularly in its Outreach program.
Several members of the IYPE board, along with representatives of some other Earth science institutions, have started to explore whether there is scope to launch a global geoscience initiative, in response to the ‘call to arms’ embodied in the Tsukuba Declaration put forward by participants in IYPE and three other International Years — the International Polar Year, the Electronic Geophysical Year, and the International Heliophysical Year.
Such an initiative, while independent of IYPE and the other International Years, would constitute a fitting legacy, contributing to global scientific understanding and international capacity building, and complementing the outreach achievements of IYPE.
The vision of the group developing this proposal is that it should:
- be inclusive, and involve a geoscience community which is broad both in terms of discipline and nationality,
- have a clear socio-economic context, and global societal relevance,
- focus on a globally significant science theme, and preferably involve global processes, and
- attract the support of scientific communities, funding agencies, governments and other institutions in many countries, under the umbrella of UNESCO and the geoscientific International Unions.
The above description was outlined at: London Meeting, July 16, 2009.
To view a PDF of the full report outlining the history and proposal of the Global Geoscience Initiative, click here.
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