International Year of Planet Earth

Eduardo de Mulder

Eduardo Francisco José de Mulder graduated as a geologist from Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and completed his PhD thesis on the geology of Western Greece in 1975. In that year he joined the Geological Survey of the Netherlands. Over the next eight years he took charge of their geological mapping and engineering geological advisory work, and supervised major projects on land subsidence, disposal of radioactive waste in buried salt domes and other geo-environmental issues. In 1997, he became head of the Geo-Environment Department of TNO, followed by his appointment as Professor in Subsurface Management in Delft Technical University. In 2000, he was appointed President of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). In that capacity he represented the Union in the International Council of Sciences (ICSU). To raise the profile of the geosciences, de Mulder launched the initiative to proclaim an International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE) by the United Nations. After completion of his term as IUGS President in 2004, he chaired the IYPE Management Team until he was appointed Executive Director of the IYPE Secretariat. De Mulder has published over 120 scientific articles and books, mainly on the application of geoscientific information.

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Ten years have passed since the Journal of Environmental Monitoring was first published in 1998. In that decade, and particularly during the last three to five years, the environment has become a leading issue in science and in politics. It is now extensively discussed in the media, in schools and around the kitchen table.

The first wave of environmental awareness began in the early 1970s, when the public became concerned about pollution and the rapidly deteriorating state of the planet. As one major polluted site after another was uncovered, those concerns deepened as simultaneously economies worldwide went into decline.

Environmental awareness at government levels peaked at UNCED in Rio de Janeiro (1992). A few years later, helped by the improved economic conditions, public concern about the state of the environment relieved as a result of the publicity given to the many clean-up actions and environmental improvements. Following the age-old bureaucratic tradition of taking a sectoral approach, ‘the Environment’ was normally divided into three different (and perhaps watertight) compartments: water, air and soil.

Another development, at a conference in Johannesburg (2002), saw the term ‘environmental protection’ replaced by ‘sustainable development’. That made it possible to think in terms of development again, but only within strict considerations of environmental impact. Policy makers began to include scientifically defined criteria in monitoring environmental changes through environmental indicators.

The current wave of environmental awareness is dominated by the anticipated impacts of climate change on environmental conditions over the entire planet. This concern is scientifically footed in the Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. The dimension and scale of the concerns changed radically, from local (polluted sites) to intercontinental (impact of greenhouse gases) and, in more scientific terms, to ‘System Earth’.

When the Scientific Committee of Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) redefined its mission a few years ago, ‘System Earth’ was placed centrally. By doing so, SCOPE demonstrated its ambition to approach the complexity of the environment in a holistic context, while acknowledging the many thousands of interconnected processes that influence all environmental change.

One of the major reasons why politicians became worried about environmental change is the possibility that it might disrupt certain aspects of public life. As politicians dislike instability in any system in which the voting public is involved, they tend to look into ways of controlling such change. This is based on the perception that environmental change was and is caused by humans only.

Geoscientists know that Planet Earth is the product of the interaction of a great many natural processes over 4.5 billion years of deep time. In fact, stability does not exist in System Earth, nor in its climate; climate change is the rule rather than the exception. To make the geoscientific perspective heard in scientific discourses, the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) initiated a Commission on Geological Sciences for Environmental Planning (COGEOENVIRONMENT) in 1990. This IUGS Commission produced a set of 27 environmental geo-indicators to monitor changes in the geosphere (landscape, rock conditions, sedimentation, erosion, state of permafrost, slope stability, etc.) at a human time scale (less than 100 years). Until then, environmental indicators had almost exclusively measured modifications in the other three spheres of ‘System Earth’–biosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere. Another COGEOENVIRONMENT initiative was instrumental in developing what we know today as the emerging area of Medical Geology. Despite its name change (to Commission on Geosciences for Environmental Management (GEM)), it has continued to make breakthroughs in the environmental arena by facilitating information that can be used for the creation of regional, national and international environmental management policy.

Many people consider the geosphere as the most stable (even “rigid”) of the spheres and for this reason had received comparatively little attention from the media and was the least visible and well-known. Normally, politicians and the public only hear about the geosphere when a natural disaster occurs—the only occasions on which, for a moment, it appears that the Earth might be less stable than we tend to think. This lack of public familiarity also becomes evident when you type the word ‘geosphere’. Microsoft Word^© does not recognize this term, and alerts the innocent reader of the apparent typographical error with a red line.

Such lack of public appreciation and awareness about the geosphere and of its implications for society at large has been one of the driving forces behind the International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE). The IYPE, proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations for 2008, runs from 2007 until the end of 2009. But even three years will not be sufficient to realize all its ambitions. One of IYPE’s aims is to expose the wealth of fascinating knowledge about our planet to the public and to show how the Earth actually works. An even more relevant ambition is to urge politicians and decision makers to apply such knowledge effectively to the reduction of natural hazard impacts upon often fragile societies (http://www.yearofplanetearth.org). Knowing how the Earth System works also helps to introduce smarter, safer, cheaper and more environmentally sustainable methods of mineral and energy resource extraction. As the IYPE is entirely apolitical, impartial and bestowed with the UN label, it might also assist in building bridges between the “green” and “brown” lobbies: two realms that tend to avoid each other’s company.

The International Year of Planet Earth strongly encourages governments to increase our knowledge base, to better cope with—or avoid—environmental problems in the future. To that end a 10-theme Science Programme was developed, focusing on hazards, resources, groundwater, soils, ocean, climate, health, deep earth, megacities and life. All these topics originate from the Year’s subtitle: ‘Earth sciences for Society’ and one of these (Health) has been a recent focus area of the JEM Editorial Board. As today about 3 billion people suffer from Earth-related health risks (polluted groundwater, dust etc.) and to attract the attention of its readership to this very relevant problem, the journal will be publishing key manuscripts on Medical Geology in its 10th anniversary year, including a critical review in this issue on ‘Natural Disasters And Their Long-Term Impacts On The Health Of Communities’ by Angus Cook and colleagues (A. Cook, J. Watson, P. van Buynder, A. Robertson and P. Weinstein, J. Environ. Monit., 2008, DOI: 10.1039/b713256p).

One of IYPE’s flagship science projects is OneGeology, aiming at the production of one digital, 1 : 1M geological map of the world, and accessible via one common computer language (http://www.onegeology.org). This will eventually pave the way towards a real “third dimension” Google Earth^© or of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth^©.

Another, even more important, focus of the IYPE is on Outreach. Apart from several major international events, such as the upcoming Global Launch Event at UNESCO in Paris, all outreach activities will be realized in the 70 countries that have already developed or are about to develop a National Committee for IYPE. Such outreach activities will include balloon launches, exhibitions, dedicated stamps and coins, songs, student competitions, school events, IYPE trains, rock competitions, popular books, cartoons, lecture series, excursions, computer games, etc.

We believe that this ‘Greatest Geo-Show on Earth’ will excite the public at large and youngsters in particular and get them more interested in the geosphere and in the Planet Earth in general. We look forward to welcoming a new generation of “geospherists” to work together with biospherists, hydrospherists and atmospherists to understand better the tricks and the treats of System Earth. Only such a combined knowledge base will really contribute to environmentally sustainable development. I hope that the scientific results of such cooperations will be published in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring. The journal is to be congratulated on its 10th anniversary, and I wish it many, many more decades publishing outstanding work!

Eduardo de Mulder

Executive Director International Year of Planet Earth Secretariat

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