JpGU-AGU Joint Meeting 2020

Presentation information

[E] Oral

U (Union ) » Union

[U-25] Special session for a Borderless World of Geoscience after COVID-19 (Challenges for the future)

Mon. Jul 13, 2020 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM Ch.1

convener:Hodaka Kawahata(Atmosphere Ocean Research Institute, the University of Tokyo), Robin Elizabeth Bell(Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory), Alberto Montanari(University of Bologna), David Laurence Higgitt(Lancaster University College at Beijing Jiaotong University, Weihai, China), Chairperson:Hodaka Kawahata(Atmosphere Ocean Research Institute, the University of Tokyo)

4:03 PM - 4:20 PM

[U25-01] Collaborative, Inclusive, Connected Earth and Space Science for our Future

★Invited Papers

*Robin E Bell1 (1.American Geophysical Union)

Keywords:solutions, community, diversity, society, global, partnerships

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted lives and communities around the world, including upending much scientific research. But it has also served to reveal the underlying inequities and institutionalized racism inherent in our health care, economic and other systems.

Unfortunately, the global crisis of human-induced climate change continues unabated and will also have outsized effects on our most vulnerable populations.

In the face of these twin challenges, scientific societies must act, but how? We can foster both discovery-based and solutions-focused science to address massive societal problems. We can build meetings accessible on all seven continents so that we work truly globally to address these planet-wide issues.

We can support programs for STEM students and early career scientists and be more deliberate in fostering diversity and inclusion in the sciences, for we cannot hope to solve the problems of the 21st century without the skills, knowledge, and ideas of all of society. We can expand our partnerships with governments, non-governmental organizations, and companies and collaborate with communities to make our science not just useful but used. And we can act individually and collectively to reduce our contribution to climate change by decreasing our own carbon footprints.



In this time of uncertainty, it is the passionate, generous spirit of the Earth and space science community that will help keep us connected.