Martin Bohle - Geo-societal Narratives: Contextualising geosciences

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Geosciences , in the sense of the science of the Earth system , have many roots with a variety of cultures, perceptions of what role the science should and does play, how its internal organisation is set up, how the interaction with neighbouring fields takes place, and, in particular, how the sciences are responding to societal expectation, and how they perceive their role in guiding societies in making the world a better place.

The classical field of geosciences is geology, which helped understand how Earth came into its present being and what massive changes it has undergone. The timescales of these geological dynamics are usually very long, and people with their relatively brief history have no role in these dynamics. However, the added value of geological knowledge in assessing significant geo-risks and providing access to minerals and energy is of immediate importance to societies.

Another classical field of geoscience is geography , which deals primarily with the inhabited world. It is the traditional field, dealing with the interaction of Earth and people, less so as biological species than carriers of culture, and giving people meaning of the Earth. For a long time, it was mostly a description of stationary conditions, as manifested in climatic determinism concepts, but also of significant importance to history and policymaking, for instance, when linked to colonialism.

At the other end of natural sciences, contributing to Earth science are biology and ecosystem sciences, which have unveiled a wonderland of complexity, non-linearity and high-dimensionality of ecosystems and their responses to not only anthropogenic pressures. Their timescales are primarily of the order of a few years, sometimes several decades of years.

These sciences have contributed to shifting at the centre of public attention the societal concern towards the state and change of the environment, at least in the West. Examples include the Club-of-Rome process, with the expectation of running out of resources, with Waldsterben (perishing of forests because of acid rain) and the expectation of accelerating extinctions, the opposition to the use of nuclear energy. Usually, humanities (Geisteswissenschaften), in this book referred to people-sciences , were hardly involved. The self-role of humanities to act as critical commentators and sense-makers mainly was compromised by an adherence to the Zeitgeist. However, science and technology studies (STS) emerged and began to understand natural sciences, as done by actors, that sciences are social processes [1].

The situation changed when climate science began its ascent. Driven primarily by theoretical physicists, supported by meteorologists and oceanographers, this field developed vigorously and quicklyand has increasingly attracted the curiosity and attention of the public. The advent of the IPCC process accelerated the career of the climate change topic to become a central global political issue, with regular UN conference of the Parties, large and ubiquitous demonstration of Western youth, and an uninterrupted flow of commercial references that whatever product of daily life is climate-friendly or even climate-neutral.

The tasks of determining what the ongoing climate change looks like, how it is consistently explained (namely by the continued release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere), and what the future may look like have since been answered and documented in the series of IPCC reports. Since then, more and other questions have arisen as to what could be the impact of these changes on ecosystems and societies, which measures are available to limit climate change, and which measure would allow meeting the celebrated