South Africa to host the International Geological Congress in 2016

South Africa has won a bid to host the 35th International Geological Congress (IGC) in 2016. This was announced at the 33rd session of the IGC in Oslo yesterday, after a bidding process involving other contenders. The IGC, a four yearly event, is a major meeting of earth scientists from around the globe attended by more than 6000 delegates. At the conference latest insights into processes in and on the Earth are discussed and debated, which in more recent years has had a strong focus on climate change and its impact on natural Earth system processes. A feature at this year’s congress is also the energy crisis and the potential of non-renewable resources of our planet, i.e. oil, coal and uranium, to meet the ever growing demand in the future.

In responding to the announcement that South Africa has won the bid to host the IGC in 2016, both the Ambassador to Norway, H.E. Ambassador Ismail Coovadia and the Chairperson of the Council for Geosciences of South Africa Professor Phuti Ngoepe, thanked voting delegates for the trust and confidence in South Africa to arrange a future IGC. They highlighted the importance of such an event not only to South Africa but the entire southern African region and the continent, with Ambassador Coovadia making specific reference to the potential of an event of this nature in considerably strengthening scientific collaboration within the context of the India – Brazil – South Africa (IBSA) intergovernmental collaboration agreement.

The bid by South Africa to host the 35th IGC was conceived from the onset as a bid for the southern African region and the support of all states of the region was solicited prior to the Oslo meeting. At the time of the bid South Africa had the full support of Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia and Tanzania, and a process will now be set in motion to ensure that the 35th IGC is a collaborative venture involving the earth science communities of all the states in the region.

In introducing the South African bid and extending the invitation to host the 35th IGC on behalf of the Government of South Africa, Thibedi Ramontja, the Chief Executive Officer of the Council for Geoscience of South Africa, stressed the need for a more concerted effort in building capacity among southern African states in the field of the earth sciences. He announced an initiative aimed at introducing a sustained effort in this regard that would draw on the vast expertise vested in the network of earth scientists under the umbrella of the IGC and the International Union of Geological Sciences.

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11 August 2008