Geoethics and Sustainability

The new scientific discipline of GEOETHICS, in the course of development during the last 20 years, has made considerable progress. To the originally preferred problems of protecting and moderating consumption of non renewable mineral resources of the Earth the priorities have been added concerning unavoidable natural disasters in connection with their presently increasing intensity. These events need to focus the actual attention and orientation of responsible activities of Earth scientists because of possibilities for both forecasting and suggesting appropriate measures for minimizing any potential expected damage. Laision of these topics with concepts of sustainability is evident. It is necessary for human kind, as well as for any further progress of its scientific background, to bring into consideration the necessity of deepening contacts of the Earth sciences with other technical and humanistic scientific fields. Geoethics may have an important role in this process as well as in introducing other new scientific domains. At any responsible level of state authorities and self-government as well as in any context of international co-operation, geoethics might be able to help in paving a better way for the needed understanding of nature by human kind. - It is also necessary to find appropriate structures which would make it possible to incorporate geoethical principles in the optimal way into the consciousness and the daily life of the global society. All efforts of not only Earth and Planetary scientists, ecologists and pedagogues but also of managers, leaders, politicians and statesmen at any level should respect – in the sense of geoethics – their own responsibility for the fate of our planet and of all its inhabitants including the future generations. - As to the final social, cultural, economic and environmental consequences for sustainability it is necessary to seek new priorities emphasizing more and more the solidarity of human kind. The needed geoethical way of thinking should be based on generally accepted moral and ethical principles achieved by mankind by various ways and experiences (in spite of some current contrary trends).