Our Purpose

Geology and Sustainable Development

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed by UN member states in 2015, are an ambitious set of 17 goals together aiming to end global poverty, fight injustice and inequality, and ensure environmental sustainability. Helping to deliver this plan is at the heart of our strategy.

We believe geological research and practice can help to deliver all the SDGs. Many of them require improved management of natural resources (e.g., land, energy, water, minerals), or understanding of Earth processes to ensure people, jobs and infrastructure are resilient to environmental change or geological hazards.

Central to the SDGs is the exchange of scientific knowledge and skills between countries, strengthening technical capacity in the world’s least developed regions, and improving the availability of scientific information to decision makers – whether they are community leaders or national politicians.  

By putting sustainability at the heart of geoscience training, building new partnerships with scientists in the Global South, and helping connect decision makers to geoscientists, we are raising awareness of why geoscience matters and catalysing the geoscience community to engage and help deliver the SDGs.