Geology for Global Development

GfGD at the EGU General Assembly 2016

BANNER (1)The EGU General Assembly is an annual gathering of thousands of geoscientists from all over the world, taking place this year in Vienna from 17-22nd April. It has been a regular feature of my personal research calendar since 2012, becoming a great opportunity to also talk about GfGD and learn from others engaged in development activities.

The EGU Programme includes 10,000+ abstracts, covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences, and great debates, press conferences, and multiple short courses. It is an important opportunity for research dissemination, learning and networking.

Here are a few sessions that we are involved in together with others that may be of interest…

Monday 18th April

  • Natural Hazards Education, Communications and Science-Policy-Practice Interface [Details] >> GfGD will be supporting this session through a PICO presentation on ‘Mobilising and equipping young geologists to engage in disaster risk reduction’. Come join the session from 8.30-10.00 in PICO Spot 1. Following this PICO session there will be a splinter meeting for further discussion on relevant topics, details here
  • Geoethics: theoretical and practical aspects from research integrity to relationships between geosciences and society [Details] >> GfGD will be supporting this session through a poster on ‘Increasing the Engagement of Geoscientists in Global Development Frameworks’. Come see it and meet the GfGD team from 13.30-15.00 in Poster Hall D (Poster D32).  
  • Promoting and supporting equality of opportunities in geosciences [Details].
  • Meeting the water needs of a growing global population: groundwater contamination, monitoring, mitigation and adaptation in developing countries [Details].
  • Energy, Resources and the Environment [Details].

Tuesday 19th April

  • Geosciences in the Anthropocene [Details].
  • Plan it Earth: is there enough resource for all? Is it just a matter of planning for the future? [Details]
  • Splinter Meeting for Early Career Scientists working on Natural Hazards [Details]. I’ll be giving a short introductory talk about the work of GfGD in this splinter meeting.

Wednesday 20th April

  • Is global economic growth compatible with a habitable climate? [Details]

Thursday 21st April

  • Working at the science policy interface [Details].
  • Geoscience and the Sustainable Development Goals: Strategies for Eradicating Global Poverty [Details]. We are organising this splinter meeting in cooperation with others from University of Tübingen. This will be an interactive session and we’d love to have your input and ideas.
  • Sergey Soloviev Medal Lecture by Irasema Alcántara-Ayala [Details] >> Landslide risk assessment and landslide disaster risk management: on the missing link between scientific knowledge, decision making and practice.
  • Soil contributions to the UN-sustainable development goals [Details].

The following sessions are based on a preliminary look at the programme, and we’re sure there are many others worth following, depending on your interests!

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We’ll be posting slides/poster downloads from all GfGD contributions on our website after the event.

You can see some commentary throughout the week on both the GfGD Twitter feed (@Geo_Dev) and on my personal account (@JoelCGill). The main conference tag is #EGU16.

Joel is the Founder/Director of Geology for Global Development (@Geo_Dev) an organisation working to support geologists to make a sustainable contribution to the fight against global poverty. He is an interdisciplinary researcher, with a PhD in geography (natural hazards), and research interests in multi-hazard frameworks, disaster risk reduction, rural water projects, and sustainable development. This work has taken him to Chile, China, Guatemala, India, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. Joel is currently based at the British Geological Survey, and tweets at @JoelCGill.