Statement on Anti-racism

A Statement on Anti-racism from Global Environmental Change Section

Dear Members of the AGU Global Environmental Change Section,

We strongly encourage everyone to stand together and join AGU in making a strong commitment to inclusion, diversity, and equity. We strongly support AGU's statement to "continuing to lead in the direction that values, upholds and honors justice and dignity for all as these are fundamental to addressing the societal challenges we face around the globe".

Commit to action. We are living amid a global outcry for an end to racism and sexism of all kinds, including practices of police brutality, a lack of accountability, and even racism in our health care system exposed by COVID-19. As scientists, we can't just be sickened by what we see. We must listen, act, and lead efforts to remove career barriers and dismantle practices that perpetuate the injustice and white supremacy inherent to our educational, political, and social systems. 

AGU, as an organization, has signed A Call to Action for an Anti-Racist Science Community from Geoscientists of Color: Listen, Act, Lead. We strongly encourage all Global Environmental Change Section members to read, reflect, and act on the powerful words and recommendations in this letter.

We also encourage you to explore and reflect with family, friends, and colleagues on structural bigotry, sexism, racism, ableism, and all oppressive systems present in our academic domains, our universities, and our society. Addressing anti-Blackness (anti-brownness, anti-Asian) and working on the ever-evolving process of becoming anti-racist, wherein we are "actively conscious about race and racism and take actions to end racial inequities in our daily lives". We admit it can be difficult to know where to start, but let's acknowledge this requires constant, consistent, and clear anti-racist and anti-sexist choices and actions in all we do. We stand in support of and solidarity with all our colleagues of color in the environmental science community. We encourage you to express your thoughts and opinions via AGU Connect as to how the Section, as a whole, can make the changes we must make.
 

The GEC Section Executive Committee (2020)

Phil Mote (President)
Julie Brigham-Grette (President-Elect)
Ellen Mosley-Thompson (Past President)
Wenhong Li (Secretary)
Kristina Bartowitz (Student representative)
Lin Meng (Student/Early Career Representative)
Junwei Xu (Early Career Representative)
Yuhan Rao (Web Master)

About Us

Global Environmental Change addresses large-scale chemical, biological, geological, and physical perturbations of the Earth’s surface, ocean, land surface, and hydrologic cycle with special attention to time scales of decades to centuries, to human-caused perturbations and their impacts on society.