Graduate Students Honored During AAG Regional Division Annual Fall Meetings for Outstanding Work
The American Association of Geographers (AAG) announces the recipients of the 2016 Council Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Paper at a Regional Meeting. Graduate student AAG members from around the U.S. participated by submitting to their region’s paper competition and attending their regional division fall meeting. A student paper from seven out of nine AAG regions was chosen by a jury of AAG regional division leaders and the honors for this inaugural award were given at each of the division meetings.
The award is designed to encourage graduate student participation at AAG regional division meetings and support their attendance at major AAG annual meetings. Each awardee will receive $1,000 in funding for use towards the awardee’s registration and travel costs to the AAG annual meeting.
Jacob Watkins, recipient of the East Lakes (ELDAAG) division’s award, is a master’s student at Western Michigan University. The award was presented by AAG President Glen MacDonald and ELDAAG Regional Councillor Patrick Lawrence.
Paul Miller, recipient of the Southeast division’s award, is a Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia.
Melody Lynch, recipient of the New England\St. Lawrence Valley division’s award, is a master’s student at McGill University.
Ashley Marie Fent, recipient of the Pacific Coast division’s award, is a Ph.D. student at the University of California – Los Angeles.
The Middle States and Mid-Atlantic regional divisions did not issue an award in this category this year.
Kathleen Epstein, recipient of the Great Plains/Rocky Mountains (GPRM) division’s award, is a master’s student at Montana State University. Her paper is titled, “The multiple meanings of ecosystem management: A historical analysis of modern environmental conflict in the Greater Yellowstone.” Pictured from left to right are AAG Executive Director Doug Richardson, Vice President of GPRM Brandon J. Vogt, awardee Kathleen Epstein and AAG Past President Sarah Bednarz.
Stephanie Mundis, recipient of the Southwest (SWAAG) divisions’ award, is a master’s student at New Mexico State University. Her paper is titled “Spatial distribution of mosquitoes that vector Zika, dengue, and West Nile Virus in New Mexico” and included co-authors: Michaela Buenemann, Kathryn A. Hanley and Nathan Lopez-Brody.
Jason LaBrosse, recipient of the West Lakes division’s award, is a master’s student at the University of Northeastern Illinois. His paper is titled, “The Relationship Between Concentrated Commodified Pets Populations and the Urban Environment of Chicago.”
Geographers do their research at a distance, build their toolkits… and find community
Scaling up AAG’s Support for Students and Early-Career Geographers
By Julaiti Nilupaer and Coline Dony
By definition, geographers study such a variety of places and spaces. Some choose to do their research about geographies near their university, and others are drawn to distant geographies. These choices were seriously challenged or derailed during the 2020-2021 academic year, which coincided with the rise of COVID-19.
Locations of about 100 students who participated in the “AAG Learning Series for Graduate Students” and their respective research sites. Dots represent the locations of students’ current universities. Triangles represent the general locations of students’ research sites.
“Focus group discussions and oral history interviews have been put on a halt. The pandemic and lockdown has made fieldwork impossible.”
“My dissertation proposal includes interviews and focus groups, all interaction moved online, getting attention is difficult.”
“The plan was in-person landscape analysis & participant observation of historic Black spaces and I cannot due to IRB guidelines.”
“This process has been very challenging for me given the isolation and precariousness of the funding situation.”
These are just a sampling from among more than 800 graduate students who registered for at least one of the limited-capacity workshops in the “AAG Learning Series for Graduate Students.” Many also shared feelings of extreme isolation, beyond the already-difficult isolation graduate students often confront; some felt obstructed in the research they had planned, proposed, defended, or already started; some felt disoriented as their programs faced budgetary cuts, their travel plans were cancelled, or their advisors asked them to change research topics or questions; some experienced all of the above or had set graduate school aside to shift their entire focus to personal circumstances.
Learning Series for Graduate Students (2020-2021)
In the Spring of 2020, two AAG members – Brittany Lauren Wheeler (Clark University) and Dydia DeLyser (California State University, Fullerton) – volunteered for AAG’s COVID-19 Rapid Response Task Force. They had the foresight to see these challenges approaching. Wheeler and DeLyser co-wrote a proposal for the Task Force that suggested a “Methods Training program” to support graduate students in adapting their research to the new realities of pandemic life. Their idea turned into the Learning Series for Graduate Students, a virtual series accessible to graduate students with an AAG membership. With the help of a Selection Committee, a CFP was developed to call upon instructors to propose virtual workshops and seminars. The selection committee was composed of faculty at all levels and a graduate student: Lindsay Naylor (Chair, University of Delaware), Dydia DeLyser (California State University, Fullerton), Adriana E. Martinez (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville), Skye Naslund (University of Washington), and Yuqin Jiang (University of South Carolina). They selected 14 proposal ideas out of 28.
The 12 completed workshops and seminars in the series thus far, have served some 10% of AAG’s graduate student membership, or a total of 243 graduate students. During these workshops, graduate student participants gained or advanced their knowledge and skills in writing, mixed-methods research, qualitative research; used social media and its data; or learned to work with different tools, such as Jupyter Notebook, Google Colab, GeoPandas, SaTScan, ATLAS.ti, Miro, Google Maps, and ArcGIS StoryMaps. Besides that, each offering had a social or networking component, which allowed students to connect with each other. Their experiences were generally positive (see the photo below, find more student quotes here, and Tweets related to the #GradResearchDuringCOVID# here).
A screen capture from Dr. Aparna Parikh and Dr. Karen Paiva Henrique’s workshop on “Critical Visual Methods for Fieldwork at a Distance.”
The series also included two workshops offered by Beverley Mullings and Linda Peake, who are among the co-founders of the AAG Mental Health Affinity Group. Although they did not cover a geography method, the selection committee for the series wanted to add workshops on mental health and acknowledge that what was being asked of our community of graduate students was more than just to simply “adapt” their research during the pandemic: they also needed support for maintaining their mental health and wellbeing.
Throughout this program, the geographers in training have shown resilience and perseverance, openness to sharing their struggles with others, and the fortitude to see past the precious time they felt was lost.
Building Your Geographer’s Toolkit and Community (2022)
The 2020-2021 COVID-19 Task Force program barely reached the tip of the iceberg. Only 1 in 4 registrants gained access, due to the limited seats. The good news is that the AAG Council renewed and increased funding for this program for 2022.
To scale this program up, AAG is taking a number of steps in the coming months. For example, we plan to create several selection committees (instead of just one), each with a particular focus, such as computational methods, and methods for qualitative data, mixed data, collecting data, visualizing data, and so on.
The renewed program could also potentially create offerings for new audiences, such as recently graduated students in non-academic jobs who are looking to continue to receive career advice, learn new tools, hear about the unique perspective they can bring in terms of advocacy or professional ethics, and most of all, keep in touch with a community of geographers.
To make sure graduate students are involved in this program beyond just being workshop participants, AAG is building this scaled-up program with input and support from the AAG Graduate Student Affinity Group (GSAG). AAG is also thinking about funding Graduate-Led Working Groups and hiring an AAG Graduate Intern to help facilitate the program.
AAG is planning an all-day event on Friday, September 10, 2021. If you have ideas, suggestions, or are interested in being involved in this program as a graduate student, instructor, selection committee member, or as an AAG Specialty Group leader, find more details and how to register at this link (free for anyone, members and non-members).
“The whole world turned upside down in the last year, and none of us are untouched,” said Gary Langham, our Executive Director. And yet, invoking former AAG president Will Graf’s favorite line, Gary reminds us, “it’s a good day for Geography.” Indeed, we believe, and we strive to lighten up another day, for another young geographer, who belongs to our global community of geographers.
The Future Is Here: Sophia Garcia and the Intersections of GIS, Redistricting, and Social Justice
We’re celebrating the accomplishments of geographers during Geography Awareness Week (November 14-20) and beyond. Find out more about this year’s theme, “The Future Is Here: Geographers Pursue the Path Forward” at our GeoWeek StoryMap, and follow the celebration at #GeoWeek or #GeoWeek2021.
Sophia Garcia, the GIS and Outreach Director for Redistricting Partners in Sacramento, CA, understands how maps can start necessary conversations. In her current role, she sees redistricting efforts and community involvement as the “perfect intersection of talking about community, uplifting the community and letting them know what’s happening.” In her work she focuses on the imperative that we bring light to the redistricting process, engage communities, and empower them to get involved.
Garcia graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from Wellesley College in 2015, and now works for Redistricting Partners from her base in Bakersfield, California. Garcia came to her current role from her previous work as a GIS Analyst for the Dolores Huerta Foundation, where she saw firsthand how she could uplift the work of her colleagues and community organizers through mapping. GIS software has great potential to start a dialogue and Garcia knows this:
Data is more than just numbers; there’s a story behind what’s happening.
Although she grew up with a father who worked in the GIS field (she attended her first ESRI User Conference when she was 10 years old, and mainly remembers the refreshments), Garcia did not see the full potential of GIS until college. Along with her classmates, she was tasked with figuring out how people living in a certain census block could do something sustainable surrounding food and grocery shopping. After knocking on doors and having conversations with people in the neighborhood, she found that not everyone had access to the nearest grocery store because of factors such as affordability, distance, and access to transportation.
In addition to her work with GIS and redistricting, Sophia is a skilled rafter and rafting guide.
Because of the geographic nature surrounding the factors of access to food and sustainability, Garcia had an “aha moment” and realized the stories of everyone she had talked to could be conveyed using a map. She started to work with GIS on the project, and eventually went on to intern with the GIS departments in Kern County to learn more about the different ways that the departments utilized GIS.
At Redistricting Partners, Garcia has been very successful in using mapping technologies and outreach to emphasize the real-world implications of redistricting, and advocate for a more fair process. She was part of the group that sparked the passage of the California Assembly Bill No. 849, which mandates rules to increase transparency in the redistricting process in cities and counties across California. This bill, which Garcia hopes to see similarly implemented in other parts of the country, requires localities to have specific redistricting websites and mandates redistricting to be talked about during long public meetings, among other components.
When asked how younger geographers can explore new, interdisciplinary possibilities in geography, Garcia urges them to find a project they are passionate about and make use of mapping technology which is often available from ESRI to college and K-12 students. She recognizes that you can categorize pretty much any data geographically, and urges young geographers to “find whatever you’re passionate about, or mad about, or excited about, and learn to map it, make it as a poster, share it with someone, and you can have a discussion about it.”
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From the Meridian
Climate Change and Carbon Emissions at the AAG
The AAG has a long history of engaging in and supporting climate change policy and research. Since climate change is the existential threat and crisis of our age, the need to continue this engagement and reduce our contribution to carbon emissions is clear. We will continue to seek policy action on behalf of our members–actions designed to influence the societal and governmental change required for durable solutions. For example, the AAG recently updated its climate statement, and just last week, our name appeared on a list of 80 societies calling for global action ahead of COP26.
Since climate change is the existential threat and crisis of our age, the need to continue this engagement and reduce our contribution to carbon emissions is clear.
A joint declaration from nearly all the world’s geography societies is a powerful thing. It calls upon our community to apply its considerable skills to the urgent consequences of climate change. One passage especially resonated with me in the week leading up to COP26:
Geographers have unique opportunities and responsibilities in the face of the global biodiversity and climate crises. […] Geographers can do much more than present an analysis of these challenges. They also have a vantage point from which they can point to the kinds of thought and action that can deliver a better tomorrow for every person on Earth.
Worldwide travel distances to the 2019 AAG meeting. By Justin Schuetz
The AAG has 16 members as part of a delegation to observe the proceedings in Glasgow, and we are proud to participate in this crucial meeting of world leaders.
However, what actions can we take to reduce carbon emissions arising from AAG activities? The Climate Action Task Force members have worked tirelessly to explore new approaches to AAG meetings with a goal of reducing emissions by 50% by 2030 (and net zero by 2050). To assist in this process and to help us set baselines and explore future options, I am pleased to release an internal AAG reportestimating the carbon emissions and the annual meeting. Using the same methods as Klöwer, Hopkins et al., we applied estimates of emissions from travelfrom the last five in-person meetings (2015-2019). This method, which assumes direct travel from each participant’s home institution to the meeting site, allows us to calculate a baseline of emissions to compare future scenarios. Here is a good summary table of the results.
This table offers summary statistics for five AAG meetings and one AGU meeting. On average, AAG meetings from 2015-2019 had carbon footprints that were approximately 23% the size of the AGU footprint for 2019. This difference was due to AAG having, on average, 34% the number of attendees as AGU. In addition, the average AAG attendee traveled only 71% as far as the average AGU attendee. The AAG meeting in San Francisco was closest to the AGU conference in terms of travel and emissions. Source: AAG (2021) Carbon Emissions Associated with Travel to AAG Annual Meetings. Unpublished analyses prepared for the American Association of Geographers by JGS Projects, October 2021, 28 pp.
We also looked at future meetings. As with all academic societies and organizations with large meetings, the AAG signs hotel contracts five or more years in advance. Our contracted meetings are Denver (2023), Honolulu (2024), and Detroit (2025). Based on our projections, AAG 2024 in Honolulu will have much higher emissions than typical meetings (35k vs. 16.5k tCO2). Our contracts make cancellation prohibitive and encourage us to look for alternative solutions. For these reasons, we seek to partner with another geography society to offer additional locations or ‘hubs,’ perhaps in Europe or Canada. Surprisingly, adding additional hubs can reduce emissions impacts dramatically, even well below our five-year average (9k vs. 35k tCO2).
To cut carbon emissions, we will need to experiment with new ways of conducting our meetings to meet our emission goals. And, by all indications, AAG members are eager to embrace new ways to meet and create knowledge together. This eagerness is evident on so many fronts, ranging from the strong registration rates for AAG 2022 to the enthusiastic participation in AAG Regions Connect in October and virtual webinars throughout the year. Being willing to try new solutions is not a recipe for getting everything right the first time, yet it is the best and only way to get things right in the end.
Please note: The ideas expressed by Executive Director Gary Langham are not necessarily the views of the AAG as a whole. Please feel free to email him at glangham [at] aag [dot] org.
Support from this grant program is awarded to outstanding students from community colleges, junior colleges, city colleges, or similar two-year educational institutions to attend the next Annual Meeting. These travel funds are generously provided by Darrel Hess and Robert and Bobbé Christopherson. The award consists of meeting registration, one year membership in the AAG, and a travel expense subsidy of $500 to be used to defray the costs of attending the AAG Annual Meeting.
Eligibility
You are eligible to apply if you are a student currently enrolled at a US community college, junior college, city college, or similar two-year educational institution at the time you submit your application. Students from minority and underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply. You do NOT need to formally participate in the meeting (e.g. paper presentation, poster, panel, etc.) to be eligible. However, if you do, please acknowledge support from the program in any presentations or publications.
As with all other AAG awards, eligibility also rests on the candidate being in compliance with the AAG Professional Conduct Policy. Nominations may be rescinded, and the award may also be revoked for any candidate or awardee who is found in violation of the AAG’s Professional Conduct Policy.
Criteria
Selection will be based on the overall quality of the application, scholastic excellence and academic promise. Preference will be given to geography majors, or from institutions which do not have geography programs, to applicants who have taken geography courses and/or plan to continue to study geography in four-year institutions. Financial need will also be considered. The selection committee will observe the purposes and preferences noted above when evaluating proposals. Two to four awards will be made annually. Awards may not be made in years when funds are insufficient or proposals are not suitable.
Applications
Applications must be received by the deadline (Eastern Standard Time). Applications will consist of background information, unofficial transcripts, and a letter of reference. Applicants should arrange for the submission of ONE Letter of Recommendation from a college instructor by making a direct request of the reference in the application portal.
Awardees must agree in writing to attend the AAG Annual Meeting and should keep all travel related receipts as expense documentation, to be provided upon request. After the meeting, awardees will also write a 2-3 page paper describing the sessions and events they attended, reporting on networking activities, and reflecting upon the experience for their learning goals and career aspirations.
This month, I am using the privilege of this space to reflect on the rising tide of nationalism, reactionary populism, and authoritarianism that has washed over the world in the last decade – from Brazil to Hungary, Russia to the Philippines, India to the US and beyond.
I do so from my perspective as a Chinese American geographer who studies contemporary Tibet. I suggest that binary thinking and academic un-freedom threaten to foreclose the potential for geographers’ (and others’) research and teaching to make a productive difference toward a livable and dignified planetary future.
Let me start with an example. In September, I was invited to provide testimony to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China for a hearing on “China’s environmental challenges and U.S. responses,” a topic chosen in anticipation of the 2021 UNCCC (COP 26) conference in Glasgow in early November. Dominant U.S. discourse focuses on the fact that China’s annual CO2 emissions are now more than double those of the US. As US-China relations have rapidly deteriorated into what some are calling the ‘new Cold War’, this has led to the repetition of the idea that ‘China is the biggest climate culprit.’ Yet, from the perspective of climate justice, this ignores the fact that China’s per capita emissions are still less than half those of the U.S., and that, since its annual emissions only overtook those of the US in 2006, its cumulative emissions are currently just over half of those of the United States. The point is not that these per capita and cumulative emissions should be equalized – that would be utterly disastrous, especially for the people already suffering the most from climate change – but rather that this fact need to be kept in mind when crafting solutions and before apportioning blame.
Most of my testimony focused on the ways in which one particular policy, which has been promoted in the name of climate change adaptation, is neither adaptive nor just for Tibetan herders in the PRC. However, as a US citizen and a scholar concerned with climate justice, I also felt compelled to argue that, rather than dwell on blaming China for its current annual emissions, it would be more productive to aim for true bilateral cooperation toward a rapid energy transition in both countries. This would include trying to avoid the emissions locked into China’s recently built coal-fired power plants, through commitments to decommission coal generators ahead of schedule and to have a coal consumption cap with regulatory consequences, but it would also include a plan and concrete policies that can enable the US to meet its target of cutting emissions by 50% from 2005 levels by 2030.
It was thus deeply disappointing when a representative (from the same political party as myself, I would add) who came in midway through the virtual hearing stated, “In 1990, greenhouse gas emissions from China were 9% of the world’s emissions and today it’s [28%]….America has gone from 17% in 1990 to 12% today…We are aggressively moving in our country to address this…What can we do to really wake up the world to the fact that China’s bad actions are not limited to forced labor camps….but they are [also] destroying the world’s environment?…” He then asked me directly, “What can we do to tell the world about [China as a bad actor] and get this [message] out there more effectively?”
I was, I admit, flabbergasted at the image of the US as a paragon of aggressive action on climate change given the last four years – or the last thirty. It is widely accepted that the Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement provided a clear opportunity for China to step into the void of global climate leadership. However, when I tried to articulate my opposition to his framing, the representative suggested that this was tantamount to me condoning what is happening in Xinjiang, referring to the crisis of extrajudicial mass incarcerations of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, and the systematic destruction of their culture, from the desecration of sacred sites to the criminalization of ordinary forms of religious observance.
As geographers, our eyes should be open to the fact that we are witnessing broad patterns, not isolated events.
What I want to point out here is a Manichean view of the world in which everything is only black or white, good or bad – “you’re either with us or against us” – where critique of one’s own country’s policies can only mean that you must be “for the other side.” This type of dualism also characterizes the position of the Qiao Collective (a group of self-identified diasporic ethnic Chinese who offer an anti-imperialist critique of the US), in its claims that the Xinjiang disappearances and incarcerations in mass internment camps are a myth, a politically motivated lie, a false name for an actually well-justified “de-radicalization program.” Their denial is interwoven with a heavy dose of whataboutism, the idea, for example, that the US has no right to critique the crackdown on and jailing of protestors in Hong Kong, given its own plague of racialized police violence.
I am not saying it is useless to point out hypocrisy – just that we can’t stop there. We also need to acknowledge that none of us have a pure position from which to stand. Furthermore, especially as geographers, our eyes should be open to the fact that we are witnessing broad patterns, not isolated events. Rather than ‘us vs. them,’ a more perceptive (and geographical) analysis could start from what geographer Gillian Hart calls relational comparison, an understanding of global processes as the result of interlinked trajectories of socio-spatial change. Understanding Xinjiang is not just a question of understanding the authoritarian Chinese state (though that’s certainly necessary); it’s also linked to transnational processes of “carceral capitalism” and “terror capitalism.”
A second example comes in the form of a resolution, introduced earlier this month by one of the nine elected regents of the University of Colorado, where I work, calling for a ban on mandatory training programs on diversity and on any teaching that acknowledges the existence of unconscious or structural racism. This is of a piece with Trump’s executive order banning diversity training based on critical race theory, calling it “divisive, anti-American propaganda,” and the recent hysteria over the purported teaching of critical race theory in K-12 schools. As of August, 27 states had introduced bills or taken other steps to restrict the teaching of critical race theory or otherwise limit discussions of racism.
As many have pointed out, this is a misuse of the term ‘critical race theory,’ a scholarly approach grounded in critical legal studies that investigates the ways in which race and racism are imbricated with law – e.g. red-lining, the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924, or the fact that Native Americans were not guaranteed the right to vote in all states until 1962. It is a sophisticated set of concepts and tools most often taught in specialized graduate seminars and used in research – including that done by geographers. To quote ethnic studies professor Jennifer Ho, “saying that critical race theory is being taught in K-12 classrooms is like saying your seventh grader is learning electrical engineering.” Teachers say they’re being banned from teaching concepts they don’t teach anyway.
But the issue is much bigger than just making a generalized bogeyman of a precise and specific scholarly concept, or of ascribing false beliefs to it. Many of the bans are so broad that they effectively force teachers to self-censor any discussion having to do with race at all. Consider Southlake Texas, where reality outdid satire recently when an administrator advised teachers that having a book on the Holocaust in their classroom necessitated giving students access to a book from “an opposing perspective,” and teachers reported being “literally afraid we’re going to be punished for having books in our classes.” In such a classroom, presumably, the basic historical facts of the territory that is now the United States, which very much include indigenous genocide and slavery, would also be off limits.
I’m actually pretty used to hearing about bans on concepts and books in classrooms in the name of “national unity” – in Tibet. Of course, the scope of educational censorship is significantly wider and the punishments far harsher in China. I am not positing an equivalence, but rather a family resemblance in the ways in which a national drive to reduce “divisiveness” undermines the value of scholarly research and trust in educators. Most recently, departments and institutes of Tibetan studies have been closed in Chinese universities, and social scientists have been warned that it is no longer permissible to do research focused on “a single ethnic group,” all in the name of “forging the communal consciousness of the Chinese nation.” The current assimilationist drive is a deliberate effort to replace ethnic consciousness and identity with a nationally unified one. Consequently, it is not permissible for teachers to state anything other than the accepted line about Han benevolence toward Tibetans. Nor can anyone talk about the actual historical-geographical processes by which the current Chinese geo-body has come to be as it now is. Let’s not get to a point where the same is true of the United States.
I titled this month’s column using a word that is ancient in origin, derived from the same Dutch root that gave us the English language “freight,” evoking heavy cargo transported from place to place around the globe. Like it or not, we all carry the cargo of previous generations, for both better and worse. Denying these inheritances, forcefully eradicating or rejecting difference in the name of the nation, drawing irreconcilable lines of enemy and friend, as dominant forces around the world increasingly incite us to do, will only create even more frightening legacies with which future generations must grapple.
Please note: The ideas expressed in the AAG President’s column are not necessarily the views of the AAG as a whole. This column is traditionally a space in which the president may talk about their views or focus during their tenure as president of AAG, or spotlight their areas of professional work. Please feel free to email the president directly at emily [dot] yeh [at] colorado [dot] edu to enable a constructive discussion.
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News
AAG Among Eighty Geography Societies Worldwide Calling for Climate Action
October 21, 2021…The American Association of Geographers is among 80 geography societies and organizations worldwide who have signed a Joint Declaration of International Geographical Societies on the Climate and Biodiversity Emergencies. Citing the “unique opportunities and responsibilities” of geographers, the letter urges the geographic community to go beyond analysis of the challenge of climate change, to pursue the “kinds of thought and action that can deliver a better tomorrow for every person on Earth.”
The statement highlights the series of consequential global meetings in October and November–the UN Biodiversity Conference and UN Climate Change Conference–addressing the world’s biodiversity crisis, habitat loss, and loss of species; and considering ways to stem the compounding impacts of climate change–expressing the expectation and hope that the world’s leaders will place the highest priority on the protection of nature and a livable climate, establishing ambitious targets for 2030.
“Geographers, whether as students, researchers, educators, writers, explorers, practitioners in business or policy, or as engaged and curious travelers, encourage our leaders to make ambitious commitments to place the protection of nature and a livable climate at the centre of the world’s economics and politics at this critical juncture. Accordingly, we pledge that our institutions will redouble our efforts to apply the unique attributes that are the hallmark of the learning, teaching, and practice of geography to the global environmental challenges that have drawn together the world’s governments to these vital meetings this year. We commit to doing all that we can to apply geography’s potent capabilities to the task of making the coming decade one of hope and of positive action.”
Please share and retweet using the hashtag #Geo4Earth.
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Sophia Garcia, the GIS and Outreach Director for 
The AAG has a long history of engaging in and supporting climate change policy and research. Since climate change is the existential threat and crisis of our age, the need to continue this engagement and reduce our contribution to carbon emissions is clear. We will continue to seek policy action on behalf of our members–actions designed to influence the societal and governmental change required for durable solutions. For example, the AAG recently 
This month, I am using the privilege of this space to reflect on the rising tide of nationalism, reactionary populism, and authoritarianism that has washed over the world in the last decade – from