ALVAR SOESOO
TTÜ
Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, dear colleagues!
I have a great pleasure to welcome you in Tallinn in the 15th Meeting of the
Association of European Geological Societies — that will take place in coming 5
days.
On behalf of the Estonian Geological Society and the group of Earth scientists at
Tallinn University of Technology I would like to extend our welcome to geoscientists,
geomanagers, and all specialists working on related fields.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are a number of key issues in present society. One of
the highest rank issue is related to Earth resources, to georesources including oil and
gas, minerals, raw materials and water and air. This is the base for national economy
and wealth. The national and international management of georesources, not matter
whether we like it or not, is also a political issue in modern world.
Today, increasing pressure is placed on resources and development often does not
preserve them. The use of natural georesources sometimes brings about all kinds of
conflicts, due to increasing demand and limitations on the resources. Some people
believe poverty contributes to the dwindling of natural resources. Bad governance
also appears to be one of the ills that must be eradicated to ensure an equitable
distribution of benefits. It addresses our concerns in the face of interests that are
sometimes divergent between development and sustainable use of resources. The
search for common solutions to these problems may help to bring environmental and
resource management from one side and development from another together.
The world economy is tied together, some countries are doing very well, other not so
well, and some of them are in very fast development stage. It’s a complex system,
every part has its freedom stages, but ultimately they all play together. It drives some
players, or nations we say, in rush for additional recourses. Lets recall the play
around Arctic. Antarctica is well protected by international environmental contracts,
so it safe at the moment. Arctic Ocean, however, has large quantities of resources,
some of them undiscovered, and it drives politicians into a kind of competition. It has
resulted claims for enlargement of economic zones by some neighboring countries.
This is a good example of relationship between politics and georesources, and this is
the situation where reasonable resource management may come into great help,
indeed. Estonia has very little to do with claims to Arctic Ocean, but even a small
country it has and it is contributing the scientific research of Arctic environment.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the modern society can not stop mining and utilization of
georesources. It is simple like that. Sometimes ultra green people suggest that if we
all work together and reduce fundamentally consumption of resources we may one
day able to stop mining. However, those people are also using every day electrical
power, transportation, watch TV and go to restaurants. They use nearly all kind of
resources available in the society. What we can do is to use resources more wisely,
to do better management, have more educated politicians. But not only that! What we
need to is to increase transparency in natural resource management and related
politics, and even more importantly to increase public knowledge about related
issues. Geoscientists can contribute to it by educating in addition to students
politicians and decision makers. The more knowledge we have the more control we
have on our future!
The scientific programme of the meeting covers many topics on Earth resources,
their geology and ideas of sustainable management. Given the quality of participants
here, and the relevance of the themes that you will address during these days, I am
very optimistic that this meeting will produce concrete outcomes and good ground for
future cooperation.
I hope you all will enjoy the scientific and cultural programme and later
geoexcursions.