Ethics in Geosciences

Dear Colleagues, What is geoethics? Let us start from the definition of the key terms which make up the word: ethics is a system of moral principles and is defined as the rules of conduct recognized with respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group or culture. “Geo-logy” means “rational reasoning/discourse on the Earth”, or more simply “study of the Earth”. “Nature” is the object of interest in the history of geology. It is defined as the foundation of existence, in its physical and biological settings, or as a set of characters in a certain region still not changed by “Civilization”. Integrating these three essential concepts, it is almost automatic to see clearly how deep and innate the link between geology and ethics is, and how it is important to develop something more than a naturally ethical behavior in practice, with the goal of recognizing and reaching strategically ethical objectives on a global scale—first of all, survival itself and a harmonious relationship between human beings and nature. So, the proposed collection aims to provide a contribution to the scientific field of geoethics, a growing field that is extremely rich in new perspectives. In parallel, the future of our planet appears to be deeply linked to geoethics. The extraordinary interest in this new field of research, with a strong appeal to translate the results of these reflections into action, testifies the social need of this innovative discipline born from the intersection between philosophy, geography, sociology, and geology. Through this collection, we would like to contribute to the geoethics debate in order to achieve a concrete discussion on risk prevention through the presentation of case studies and theoretical approaches. Special attention will be devoted to unconventional ways of interpreting the role of geoscientists in referring to ethics (after all, that is the core concept in everyone’s life), starting from ideas, experiences, and results achieved by the geoethics research community, but also from the dialogue between scholars of human, natural, and social sciences to face the great challenges related to global change.