PREFACE

 

     In October 1992 a small group of people including four prominent visitors from abroad (J. Bussac - France, L.P.Ryzhova – Russia, A.S.Trembecki – Poland, F.L.Wilke – Germany) arrived to Příbram to attend the first international meeting on problems of geoethics (without directly using that term). It was organized and chaired by V. Němec as an independent part of the section on “Mining and Ecology”. 

      Two years later – in October 1994 – a larger group attended the first international meeting held as an independent section under the new name of GEOETHICS. The useful negotiations resulted in creating an international committee on geoethics with V. Němec (chairman), M.A.Komarov (Russia), L.Němcová (Czech Republic), L.P.Ryzhova (Russia), N.L.Shilin (Russia), S.Szabo (Slovakia), A.S.Trembecki (Poland), F.L.Wilke (Germany) and A.N.Zemtsov (Russia). The members of the committee mostly helped to organize further regular meetings on the subject of geoethics in the frame of the Mining Příbram Symposia (1996 and 1998 at Příbram, 1999 in Prague in conjunction with the popular international section on “Mathematical Methods in Geology”). Regular preparatory meetings of the committee and other persons who were interested in the progress were held in Prague in 1995 and 1997. The Table 1  shows the growing international interest for the new discipline – as it has been presented at the meetings at Příbram.

 

Tab. 1

 PARTICIPATION OF AUTHORS

IN THE INTERNATIONAL SECTIONS ON GEOETHICS

organized as part of the Mining Příbram Symposia

 

 

 

       Several members of the committee and other people started to organize special individual or regular meetings on geoethics. Such a meeting took place in Cracow (Poland) in 1994 (organized by the Polish Academy of Sciences and personally by Prof. Trembecki; by the way V. Němec presented his ideas about necessity to solve specific ethical problems in earth sciences for the first time just in Cracow already in 1991 at the conference organized at the occasion of the 70 years jubilee of Professor Trembecki) or  at the Technical University of Košice (Slovakia) in 1996. Thanks to the initiative of L.P.Ryzhova regular special sections on geoethics were prepared in Moscow in the frame of the International Conferences on “New Ideas in Earth Sciences” (1997, 1999, 2001) organized by the Moscow State Geological Exploration Academy. L.P.Ryzhova and occasionally also M.A.Komarov were in the chair. V. Němec was also invited to give special lectures about geoethics in Slovenia (Bled, the First Regional APCOM Symposium 1994), Russia (Kaluga 1995), Germany (Freiberg, 1996), Poland (conferences at Rytro in 1995 and 1999, meeting in Cracow 1998).  V. Němec and L. Němcová presented the problems on geoethics at many occasions also in England (Southampton 1993), Iceland (Reykjavík 1993), Norway (Sandvika 1993), Slovakia (Banská Bystrica 1995, Košice 1997), China (Xuzhou 1996), Germany (Chemnitz 1999), Brazil (Sao Paulo 2000), India (Nagpur 2000), Hungary (Szeged 2001), not to speaking about numerous both international and national meetings, conferences and lectures in the Czech Republic.

 

       The international activities culminated at the 29^th, 30^th and 31^st International Geological Congresses in 1992 (Kyoto, Japan), 1996 (Beijing, China) and 2000 (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) with gradually introducing the respective problems in appropriate steps  (as presented in  Table 2).      

 

Tab. 2:

GEOETHICS AT THE INTERNATIONAL GEOLOGICAL CONGRESSES

¹⁾Special Symposium Nr. 21.3, title: "Geoethics, geological education, training and the related international exchanges" (the numbers concern only geoethics). – The co-convener for the part on Geoethics was V.Němec.

²⁾Special Symposium Nr. 26.1, title: "Geoethics". – As co-conveners of the special symposium served V.Němec and P.Martins.

 

In all above mentioned meetings very important contacts have been established what helped to a fast development of the new discipline.

 

      When presenting the written contributions for the international section on Geoethics at Příbram 2001 I would like to make also some introductory technical remarks:

 

 

-         The editor with the co-convener of the section took the liberty to group all contributions into four sub-sections:

               A)   General problems of geoethics (altogether 6 contributions),

B)      Professional ethics and education problems in earth sciences (6 contributions),                               

C)     Geoethical problems connected with exploring and exploiting mineral deposits (10 papers),

D)    Geoethics and the environmental problems (7 contributions).

-         Many authors did not use at all the right to publish complete texts of papers and therefore only the respective abstracts can be published.

-         Almost all authors used the English language for presenting their contributions. In two cases (GC4 and GC5) the editor was asked to make the translation from the Russian original. The editor has purchased also the English version of excerpted original Russian abstract for the paper GA 1. Only two papers (GA 1 and GD 7) are published in the original Russian version.

-         Because the real complete papers mostly are not too long and because the remaining contributions are presented by abstracts, it has been decided not to publish separate abstracts and papers volumes and to print all documents as a unique set.

-         Both contributions of J.G.Vargas-Hernandez have been obtained as very long complete papers (33, resp. 36 pages).  Because both topics are not primarily connected with geoethics, it has been decided to print just the respective (rather long) original abstracts of the author.

-         On the other hand the editor took the liberty to prepare a unique set of shorter abstracts of all contributions in the Czech language for the Czech participants of the Symposium. It was impossible to authorize all these abstracts by the appropriate authors.

 

We are looking forward to the success of the section in 2001 and also to the further international development of geoethics.

 

 

Prague, September 2001