AGI's Framework on Addressing Equity in the Geoscience Societies and the Challenge of Defining Success

The American Geosciences Institute in cooperation with its member societies has developed the Framework for Addressing Racial and Ethnic Equity in Geosciences Professional Societies.  The geoscience societies are a pivotal area to influence the culture of the geosciences, and in response to the events of June 2020, many societies determined they needed to directly act on the issue of equity in the geosciences. Being birthed from a federation of US-centric organizations, the Framework has clear US-aligned approaches and boundaries.  However, the baseline proposed actions are fundamentally universal and meet the goal of the authoring committee to provide a framework from which we hope geoscience organizations of all types would use it to craft their own specific action plan and policies.   A critical component of this framework for the committee was to ensure definable actions were included.   Some of these suggested actions and their intended extensions will be discussed.  Additionally, ongoing conversations among the societies, with the US National Academy of Sciences Board on Earth Science and Resources, and other science organizations have begun to examine what the path forward looks like.   One area that AGI particularly is concerned about is the process of measuring progress.   Understanding and recognizing the impacts of efforts like this is critical to ensure agile responses for success.   But with AGI's intimate knowledge of much of the U.S. federal data, some of the ambiguities and definitional challenges within the US system complicates the ability to directly measure progress and for which further discussion of what success looks like is critically needed.