“Geoscience delivers a sustainable
and equitable future”
Our vision for the 38th International Geological Congress is to create a forum to share breaking science and the breadth of expertise across global geoscience, especially where they relate to the great societal challenges of our time.
The ability of planet Earth to support a population of 8 billion people (and growing) depends on our stewardship of geological resources: groundwater for drinking; mineral fertilisers for food production; minerals for construction and feedstocks; raw materials for the energy transition and consumer goods; and novel forms of zero-carbon energy for power, heating, cooling, and energy storage. How we develop the infrastructure and resources needed to support populations (increasingly in cities) in ways that improve quality of life, globally and equitably, depends on the geosciences working hand-in-hand with engineers, financiers, planners, and often, local communities.
Our sustainable future will be decarbonised with net-zero carbon emissions, where new and expanded energy technologies are resourced with raw materials that are themselves sourced with minimal environmental impact. A sustainable economy will be circular – from the use of mine tailings and appropriate enhanced weathering of soils, to recycling and reusing end-of-life products. It includes fostering biodiversity, including subsurface biodiversity, and enhancing ecosystems. It requires increasing resilience – to climate shocks (floods, droughts, permafrost melting), natural disasters (volcanic, seismic, karstic), and anthropogenic disasters (oil spills, mine heap and dam failure). Geoscience plays – and will continue to play – a critical role in these endeavours. How can we better marshal and apply our collective learnings and expertise to meet these global challenges? Geoscientists are agents of positive change who can inform policy, including informing current and future UN Sustainable Development Goals.
An equitable future requires transition away from hydrocarbon dependency and the development of new resources developed in collaboration with communities, utilising their experiences and know-how. It must support the ambitions of all communities across the globe. The IGC can be a forum that celebrates, engages and values diversity – locally and globally – to support the search for, and application of, solutions to deliver the sustainable and safe future, now and for future generations. But this will only be fair if there are opportunities for everyone to be included in the debate. Enabling participation is central to our vision for the 38th International Geological Congress, 2028.
In many parts of the world, geoscience is facing a crisis of undergraduate recruitment. At the same time, the increasing relevance of geoscience to our socially and environmentally just future is manifested in a skills shortage in many industries. The graduates of tomorrow will be required to work in highly interdisciplinary teams that cross traditional silos of science, engineering, and society. This forward-looking Congress will encourage the next generation of geoscience students, break down barriers between disciplines and foster stronger links between geoscience, industry, social justice, law, and society.
And so our proposal is to draw out the key debates in daily themed plenary sessions that will be live-streamed and recorded. These themes will be threaded across oral and poster sessions as appropriate, through the Congress. They will dovetail with discipline-specific sessions and help to create a collective narrative – showing how the diversity of geoscience endeavours can tackle the challenges of today.
Daily themes
Daily themes will draw out discussion within our overall vision for the IGC. Each theme will tie to plenary and interdivisional sessions, supported by poster sessions, with reporters feeding into plenary presentations. These will run alongside divisional and IUGS commission sessions. A distinct theme for each day will be geared to topical questions and issues. A definitive list of topics will be constructed in consultation through the Science and Programme Committee in 2025-26. However, at this early stage we propose the following themed days, which are a mix of established and emerging areas in the geosciences, and which encompass all areas of fundamental and applied geosciences:
Energy and Infrastructure
Subsurface energy resources and infrastructure are essential to decarbonise the world energy system. For example, geological energy storage offers gigaWatt-scale interseasonal storage essential in an intermittent renewable-dominated energy system. The phase out/down of hydrocarbons offers opportunities to repurpose the subsurface: for example, geological carbon storage in depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs, borehole and minewater geothermal, cavern energy storage. The optimal development of these, potentially interacting, subsurface technologies requires innovative new approaches to characterising, monitoring and engineering the subsurface, and in coupling these technologies to other sectors such as water, transport and health.
Hazards and hazard mitigation
The intersecting challenges of climate change, urbanisation and population growth are resulting in changing risk profiles from natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes and flooding, and anthropogenic hazards such as aquifer contamination and dam failure. This theme explores how geoscience is at the heart of predicting, managing and mitigating many of these hazards, and how this is coupled to other hazards such as disease outbreaks after natural disasters.
Circular economy for sustainable and just resource exploitation
Extractive industries are essential for renewable energy, energy storage and green transportation, yet are associated with high emissions of carbon and other pollutants, social and environmental impacts. Industry must rapidly adjust to new advances in digital and AI to develop technologies to lower the impact of resource exploration and extraction e.g., smart mining for critical minerals. As well as new resources we are seeing opportunities for post-industrial resource extraction: valourisation of waste such as reclaiming metals from mine tailings, or remediating and enhancing contaminated land opens up new economic opportunities. The geosciences must underpin a circular economy.
The resilience of water resources and the environment
The increase in global population and standards of living have driven an increase in the increase in the volume and impact of agricultural, extractive and manufacturing industries, including increasing demand on groundwater. The need to address the resulting land and water contamination requires new technologies in the detection and clean-up of contamination and environmental forensics to determine ownership and attribution. In addition, emerging contaminants such as microplastics and pharmaceuticals must drive innovation in detecting and remediation in order to sustain a healthy and biodiverse water resources and environment. The impact of climate change and conflict on the use of transboundary aquifers and other shared resources must be understood and managed to enhance resilience.
Soil Science and Agrogeology
The soil we rely on to feed our planet is being used up faster than it is replenished. There is a clear relationship between bedrock geology and the formation and preservation of healthy soil. The development and characterisation of soils from rocks is important to understand surface processes, which, in turn, are linked to climate, terrain and geology as well as how geological resources can contribute to soil remineralisation, soil health and crop production.
Cross-conference threads
Six threads will run through the interdivisional, divisional and commission sessions. While not all sessions will address every thread, by highlighting threads within the programme, conference attendees will be able to identify talks across each thread allowing them to gain a deeper understanding of how the breadth of geoscience contribute to key societal impacts.
Geology and Human Health: geological health impacts from the food we consume to the landscape we live in
Bio-geodiversity: subsurface biota, their impact on geological and anthropogenic processes, and interactions with surface ecosystems.
Global Security: energy security, supply of critical minerals, trans-boundary aquifers and conflict.
Communities: capturing communities’ knowledge of their geo-environment including from indigenous communities.
Effective communication: for geoscientific understanding and to inform communities and other stakeholders.
Geosciences in the digital age: new methods for data gathering, analysis and interpretation including AI, virtual outcrops and the DNA sequencing boom.