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.

Space exploration has enabled humanity to unlock and discover amazing things about the Earth we inhabit. It has pushed our scientific boundaries and transformed the way in which we communicate, navigate, predict the weather, monitor climate, and investigate the rest of the Solar System and the Universe. With humanity’s ever growing greenhouse gas emissions and resource exploitation driving us closer to tipping points that threaten our existence, could it also be a solution to our planetary boundaries? Could we reduce our impact on Earth by exploiting the resources and energy sources of other planets? Or is extending humanity’s exploitation to nearby planets an unethical option that will cause more problems than it solves?

This Great Debate will outline the benefits and opportunities that we may be able to achieve through space exploration while debating the ethical dilemmas and potential risks that it comes with. It will discuss the impacts of private investment into space exploration and the potential for its regulation. Not only is this an ethical issue, but unregulated access to space exploration and a surge in activity has the potential to result in collisions and space debris that, could in an extreme circumstance, limit our access to space in the future. The panelists will also debate if humanity can ethically exploit the resources on other planets and objects in space and how we can limit our impact beyond our planetary boundaries.

The sheer number and ferocity of extreme weather events causing major impacts in recent years have shocked and surprised many, including those working in the earth science community. We are seeing temperature records smashed by large margins, unprecedented wildfires, and floods with huge destructive power and massive impacts.

Despite widespread media coverage of these devastating events, policy and public opinion still lag a long way behind what is required to address the climate crisis effectively and rapidly.

This Great Debate asks why this might be the case, and critically examines the role of the earth science community in driving public opinion and policy making. It will examine the messaging, the tone and the science that shapes how climate change is presented to the public and policymakers, and look at how our community can help to drive climate action before it is too late.

The session will ask:
• Climate change impacts appear to be worse than we thought, and have come sooner than we thought. Is this the case?
• Are the traditional methods of describing climate change, in terms of 1.5 oC of warming, 7% more precipitation etc. hindering more than helping, since it is the terrifying extreme events way outside of these narrow margins that have such catastrophic impacts?
• Is the term ‘warming’ in itself problematic? Warmth is generally perceived as a good thing, a nice thing. 50 oC heat and raging wildfires however are anything but good or nice.
• How can we effectively forecast and express the extremes, and communicate the potential impact of major tipping points?
• Has the policy of putting an optimistic spin on the climate crisis failed? Does the conversation now need to pivot toward the terrifying consequences of inaction?
• How do we ensure messaging from the earth science community is impactful and effective…?

Proponents of collaboration between scientific experts with advocacy and activist groups point towards the inextricable bonds between science and politics, where neither exist in a vacuum and silence only perpetuates the problems research seeks to resolve. Opponents cite the threat to integrity: scientists associated with or engaging in activism risk producing an image of science as a political group rather than a dispassionate process of knowledge generation. Such an image may erode public trust and risk political retaliation through funding cuts. Identifying the threshold between maintaining scientific integrity and motivating change is therefore critical, as it strikes the balance between preserving the academy and positioning science to have real impact. As many researchers are driven to science by their own passions, a considerable intersect exists between the desire to do science and to see beneficial, just change in real terms. This makes for a suitable debate where the lines scientists walk can be discussed, such as the balance between scientists actively engaging advocates and activists, and the scientist’s positions as a neutral broker of information. This debate will be driven questions seeking to demarcate this boundary, asking: Is there an ethical imperative for geoscientists to engage with climate-advocacy groups? How can scientists best support advocates for evidence-based societal and environmental change? How political should science be, and is there a line which, when crossed, may threaten scientific integrity? Is there space for both knowledge brokers and science advocates when pursuing change? Should scientist look towards grass-root movements or engage with governmental institutions? What does scientific activism look like, and can it be implemented across a range of actions?

Following on from the success of the 2022 EGU EDI Union Symposium 'Scientific Neocolonialism: What is it and why should you care?', the EGU would like to expand the conversation surrounding this important topic. In particular, the aim of this Great Debate is to hear from people that have experienced neocolonialism in science, acknowledge the issues, explore solutions that our scientific community and the EGU can implement to raise awareness, and discuss examples to eliminate neocolonialism from our geoscience ecosystem. In particular, we will continue conversations on the following questions:
- Why is it vital that local communities participate in geoscientific research?
- Which barriers are preventing inclusion of local communities within the geoscience research ecosystem (this will include personal testimonials from geoscientists from under-represented countries)?
- What are the tools and mechanisms to advocate and amplify the voices and recognition of local knowledge in geoscience research?
- How can research funding help geoscientists construct meaningful and fair scientific exchange with local communities where international science is conducted?
- How can institutions help geoscientists to conduct science including local communities?

Is social media a worthwhile vector for communicating science and reaching non-expert audiences? Proponents of social media highlight its ability for bringing otherwise inaccessible research to a global network, spreading research to new audiences whilst cultivating a following. The public can be updated with discoveries in real-time, without the potentially modifying lens of traditional media. And with content under the control of individuals or small groups communicators can flex and nurture their creativity. But communicating through social media often requires sacrificing nuance and accuracy for the extremely short time-frames of attention and engagement. Critics also state that it requires a considerable time-investment and money, which may otherwise distract from core research activities. Amongst this is also the fear that social media exposes communicators to the possibility of derision and hateful conduct. In this Great Debate, our panellists will be asking if effective communication on social media is possible or whether scientists are better investing their efforts elsewhere.

The global scientific community agrees that science, knowledge and publications should be open and accessible to everyone. Within the international science landscape, however, different strategies are applied to reach this goal within the near future. Various global or national initiatives are pursued to introduce transformative agreements between publishers and research institutions or libraries to accelerate the transformation from subscription-based to open access publishing. An increasing number of funders/research institutions set up institutional agreement with publishers to cover publication costs for their researchers. The pace and nature of establishing such agreements greatly varies between research institutions in various countries which leads to disadvantages for researchers across the world.

More than 20 years ago, EGU pioneered its publication model of open access publishing with open peer review for transparency and high quality in publishing. In this tradition of these values, this plenary discussion is aimed at bringing together representatives of European research institutions and funding agencies. The discussion will be focused on how and why different approaches towards fully open access publishing are pursued and on possible steps to achieve jointly and efficiently the common goal of open access publishing and open science on European and wider levels.

The joint ESA–EGU Earth Observation Excellence Award recognises and honours individual scientists and teams that have contributed to the innovative use of Earth observation, with a focus on the use of European datasets in the field of science and applications.

We are hosting a ceremony to celebrate the Awardees’ achievements, as well as them presenting the highlights of their winning researches.

The recipients of the 2023 Award are:

Individual: Susanna Ebmeier from University of Leeds

Team: Désirée Treichler, Bas Altena, Luc Girod, Solveig H. Winsvold, and led by Andreas Kääb from University of Oslo.

We also announce the plan for the next round of the EO Award 2024.

The ceremony will conclude with a reception.

We invite you to join us to learn more about this exceptional Award and to discover how you might be the next winner.