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... can enormously help one understand the various ways in which one interacts with the planet. ------Author is a Research Fellow with Earth Observatory of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He can be reached at: afroz@ntu.edu.sg.
The need to understand and update our scientific knowledge about geological processes is slowly increasing in the modern times and this will profoundly deepen as we move further ahead because it involves the Earth and the various processes, which directly or indirectly affect life on it. The incoming challenges for global sustainability and hazard mitigation will have to be countered with new and innovative ways of technology and research. The requirement to save people from natural disasters and an increase in the demand for various resources, the scarcity of raw materials and energy requirements for the rapidly increasing populations, particularly in the developing world, it will be required of all scientists to play their roles in a big way, but a major responsibility has to be shouldered by the geologists. They are the only people who can understand the Earth processes better and therefore, can act as saviours of the planet. These scientists work to discover and understand new ways to make this planet healthy and sustainable. However, such goals can only be achieved provided we understand the need for focused applied science.
Historically speaking, through most of the past century, Earth Sciences largely served as a device for exploitation of natural resources. It is true that industrial output increased 13-folds whereas energy use expanded 16 times with an increase in the water consumption by a factor of 7. This helped about 25% of human population to live comfortably. This; however, is a win at the cost of Earth?s environment. The question that will haunt humans in the 21st century will be to maintain a tidy balance between the nature, its environment and the human comfort. To keep and sustain such a balance will be hard. Science in general and Earth sciences in particular will have to play a key role in the accomplishment of this complicated objective.
In the past, the realization to have sustainable and healthy Earth were grossly overlooked by the greedy anthropogenic exploitation of resources, however, this changed during the 1980s, when United Nations set up the Brundtland Commission to assess the Earth?s health and its environment. The concept of ?sustainable development? was introduced in its report; ?Our Common future?. It was realized that the role of geosciences to promote and propagate the knowledge of the Earth and its complex interaction with surroundings is required for a sustainable and healthy planet. It has been lately emphasised as to how human actions impact our delicate environment and how complexly different geological processes are interwoven and interconnected. Professor Wolfgang Lucht in one of his recent publications in the Nature magazine (2011) warns that the current planetary state can be destabilized if human activity causes critical Earth-system thresholds to be passed. He further stresses: With enough warning and insight, we might avoid or limit the damaging changes, or adapt to them rather than simply suffering the consequences. But the current lack of progress in mitigating climate change and preserving complex ecosystems is not promising.
Therefore, the earth scientists are required to understand and answer the questions in order to maintain a healthy planet. Similarly, natural and various anthropogenic hazards will pose significant threat to our existence. Thus the role of geoscientists, which has unfortunately been ignored in the last decade, cannot be taken for granted now.
Earthquakes and tsunamis continuously pose unremitting threats to our young, 10,000-year-old, civilization. The devastations of Acehnese and Thai coasts in 2004, of Kashmir and New Orleans in 2005, of southwest Java in 2006, of Sumatra again in 2007, western Sichuan and Myanmar in 2008, of Haiti in 2010, Japan, New Zealand and Turkey, in 2011, brought about colossal damage in terms of death and destruction. These disasters remind us of a desperate need to understand the basics of Earthquake Science and to implement various methods of mitigation and simultaneously, think of various ways, in which the prediction can be made possible.
In some of these events the warning signs were known to exist; for example, New Orleans and Port au Prince, which had long been recognised as a catastrophe waiting to happen, but somehow even that awareness did not produce the desired effect! Similarly, there are several places in the world, for example SE Asia, where the knowledge about earthquakes is still in its infancy. This has caused colossal loss to life and property. For example in Kashmir and Aceh, these tragic examples, in which basic scientific ignorance and the inability to translate the acquired knowledge into timely planned action clearly shows the challenges earth science faces today.
Similarly, the volcanic hazards are keeping us on toes, for example, one of the Iceland?s volcanoes known as Eyjafjallajökull erupted on 14 April this year, for the first time in two centuries. The ash clouds forced aviation authorities of UK to shut down the airspace affected by these clouds for six days. It is reported that most northern European countries also shut their airspace for over a period of 5 days, which affected about 10 million travelers worldwide with a loss of about 2.1 billion Euros.
It was only recently, when some of the events listed above shook the world out of the torpor that it was in. Now, we are curious to understand the system and its integration with the other systems. But, how far have we been successful in achieving that. I will quote an Indian example, a country with over a billion population, is prone to almost all kinds of natural disasters, still the geoscience education is poorly represented in schools, colleges and universities. India has no earth science curriculum for schools! Only, students at their undergraduate level are exposed to a meaningful earth science degree course. Only a few universities offer a full geology degree course. In fact the well-known technological institutes called the IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) have a very limited geology education curriculum representation. Out of a total of 16 IITs, only 4 offer full degree courses in geology. It must be noted that 9 IITs have recently been added to this list and only one amongst these offer geology programs!
In future the need to have a robust earth science education system will intensify, the ride will be bumpy, steep and often full of hurdles and will therefore; require a strong and motivated workforce. All the concerned people will have to share the burden of responsibilities, which will be faced by us as we proceed further in the evolutionary path. Geologists have to take a multidisciplinary approach to save the destruction and help mankind to make Earth a sustainable and healthy planet. A basic earth science education is required to be included in the academic curriculum around the globe. A global project aimed to propagate the earth sense is very important to understand the basic concepts of geology, which can enormously help one understand the various ways in which one interacts with the planet.