Society has been facing many compounding impacts from extreme events related to natural and geo-hazards (storms, floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions, landslides, forest fires, etc.) that occur simultaneously or in succession. Ongoing societal, environmental, and political crises (such as the COVID19 pandemic and armed conflicts) provide additional challenges, reducing our capacity to deal with these compounding hazards and potentially impacting our ability to manage them in the future with resources, policies, and attention being redirected. With climate change likely to exacerbate the compounding impacts of these extreme events, this symposium asks whether we have the capacity to predict them in advance and reduce ecological, social, and economic damages. Knowing how science is used during extreme events, societal crises and subsequent policy discussions is key to understanding the role that researchers and the scientific community can play in providing evidence and support during pivotal moments.

This symposium will address how Europe can more effectively address multihazards and compounding impacts from extreme events through ongoing societal crises. It will outline the policy pathways and key legislation, such as the Sustainable Development Goals and European Green Deal, that are needed to frame common goals and how our current geopolitical crises will impact them. It will use specific examples, such as recent European droughts, current energy shortage, and potential food insecurity, to discuss how scientific evidence has been used to steer decisions and how these challenges could be used to boost technical developments and future initiatives. The panel will also discuss the need to create pre-emptive strategies and frameworks that minimize the impact of compounding natural disasters, unexpected societal crises, and resource shortages.

Despite a large, reported interest significant barriers prevent academics from contributing to decision-making processes, including a lack of knowledge about how to engage, insufficient time to participate, and a lack of acknowledgement of individual contributions beyond citations. For example, engaging with policy decision-making processes is not necessarily rewarded in the same way as other activities, such as publishing in journals or generating press coverage. This acts as a significant barrier to participation for many academics, but particularly early career researchers. But what might solutions look like? Funders can act as agents of change that promote, recognise and reward academic-policy engagement; universities must recognise and reward the varied workload attached to the impact agenda; policy institutions must provide academics the supporting documents which can help them to demonstrate impact. Whatever the solutions are, they require the foundation of new incentive structures, better recognition of engagement, and cultural change. Part of this requires establishing dialogue between academics, funding bodies, and policy institutions.

Europe is made up of a diverse group of countries with different languages, cultures and environmental pressures. As the European Geoscience Union celebrates its 20th anniversary and looks forward to its next challenging 20 years, we would like to reflect on the current representation of European countries within our geoscience community. We would like to explore the barriers our under-represented European countries face in order to access geoscientific knowledge and resources to conduct scientific research and network with the international geoscience community.
With this Union Symposium, we would like to initiate a conversation with our members on a number of challenges faced by researchers from under-represented European countries. The aim is to explore initiatives that EGU can develop to help raise awareness of and to promote the inclusion and diversity of geoscientists from under-represented European countries in the geoscience ecosystem.

Many geoscientists at some point in their career have the responsibility of caring for family members for extended periods of time. Depending on the support networks in place this can lead to considerable and all too often insurmountable periods of time in a geoscientists career where they find themselves excluded from geoscientific networking experiences and employment opportunities. This not only leads to carers experiencing feelings of isolation, they may also experience financial difficulties alongside increased mental charge eventually causing many carers to leave the geoscience ecosystem. In the case of sole parents and carers the lack of accessibility to research opportunities that help build their career is particularly acute. Formal support for geoscientist parents is often lacking within academic institutions. Pragmatic support networks and funding in academia are vital to help researchers and their dependents build healthy and fulfilling careers and lives.
As the European Geoscience Union celebrates its 20th anniversary and looks forward to its next challenging 20 years, we recognise and would like to raise awareness that a large fraction of geoscientists have caring responsibilities that exclude them from participating in the European Geoscience Union General Assembly.
With this Union Symposium, we would like to initiate a conversation to raise awareness of the challenges experienced by EGU members with caring responsibilities and especially sole carers over the past few years. We want to explore feasible solutions that can increase the inclusion of carers in geoscientific conferences and look into tools and mechanisms that can facilitate accessibility.

An ally is often defined as someone who is not a member of a marginalised group but wants to support and take action to help others in that group. Allyship is crucial for realising the potential for inclusion and equality, and in turn improving diversity in a broader community. Being an effective ally for marginalised groups is often a delicate balance of supporting actions. For example, poor allyship can be speaking over marginalised people by taking credit and receiving recognition for arguments that the unprivileged have been making for their entire lives. However, transformative progress can be made when individuals with privilege – and power – can work with solidarity and partnership with a marginalised group of people and help amplify their voices and remove the systems and structures that impact the group’s rights, access, and ability to thrive in our community.
This Union Symposium will highlight and discuss allyship and its role in improving equality, diversity and inclusion across the geosciences.