SUSTAINABILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Two issues that impact both science and society are “sustainability” and “environmental justice”. Given the global population growth estimates and the dwindling resources, a major concern is how to adequately support our future population. Planning to meet their needs is often limited by the knowledge and experiences of the planners and policy makers. Will their plans apply equitably to a diverse community or will some segments of the population be left out in the cold? What should we do now to ensure diversity is protected and all members of the population are treated equally in planning for the future? Any group that is trained in earth science will have an advantage in understanding our future needs for water, energy, resource management, and access to basic services. To ensure justice in sustainability planning, we must develop inclusive educational practices aligned to the diverse public so that they can fully participate in the planning and ensure involvement of an inclusive, diverse population. However, there are barriers to geoscience education that must be addressed before most geoscience programs can be completely inclusive. For example, a student with a physical disability may be discouraged from a geoscience career because of required field activities. A common perception is that field activities are critical to a geoscience education and, while accommodations may be available they are inferior to the “real thing”. However, alternative learning techniques are being developed that have the potential to produce the same or a better education without the field activities. Similarly, a member of an underrepresented group that has a long history of having resources taken from them may not want to make a map of their land that shows where resources can be found. A student from a large urban setting may not want to handle rocks in a lab or a female student may be told she is not likely to succeed in a “man’s field”. Large segments of our population do not have role models in their neighborhoods or courses available at their local schools and universities. If everyone is going to have a fair chance at a quality life in the future, they must be educated and, if they are going to be educated, we need to remove the barriers some groups face and increase the diversity of the students we recruit and successfully education in geoscience.