The International Geoethics Research Infrastructure

Abstract

The development of geoethics has made remarkable progress in recent years, involving a growing number of scholars from various disciplines. This has led to the creation of spaces dedicated to sharing reflections, points of view, and study material. The network of relationships between scholars has significatively incremented both physical and virtual spaces for discussions strengthened conceptual coherence in geoethical thought, anchoring reflections in the historical evolution of the discipline and promoting further developments through open analysis.
At the heart of this network is the International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG), founded in 2012. More recently, two new bodies have joined this network: the Commission on Geoethics of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), established in February 2023, which serves as the supporting branch of the IAPG to the IUGS and is the official body addressing geoethics and social geosciences for the Union; and the Chair on Geoethics of the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH), established in January 2024, whose aim is to broaden the international research network by promoting interdisciplinary initiatives that integrate geosciences, humanities, and social sciences through geoethics.
These three bodies together represent the International Geoethics Research Infrastructure (IGRI), built over years of activity in geoethics at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Rome, Italy. It also includes the School on Geoethics and Natural Issues (the “Schola”), founded in 2019, and two editorial initiatives.
This paper provides an overview of the foundations of geoethics and outlines the progressive development of the international research infrastructure supporting it.