Helmut Geist (geographer)

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Helmut J. Geist (* 1958 in Kastl ) is a German geographer . From 2006 to 2012 he was Professor of Human Geography at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

Life

Having grown up in a rural family of craftsmen in the Upper Palatinate Jura , Helmut Geist passed his school leaving examination in 1977 at the Max-Reger-Gymnasium Amberg . He completed a degree in geography in Würzburg and Tucson, followed by community service with a medical aid organization.

In 1986, Geist became a research assistant for economic geography at the University of Würzburg and received his doctorate in 1989 with an award-winning thesis on agricultural sustainability in the West African Republic of Senegal.

As a PostDoc he worked from 1994 to 1998 at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and in 1999 in Washington DC at the German-American Center for Visiting Scholars .

From 2000 to 2005, Geist was managing director of the LUCC ( Land Use and Cover Change ) project at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Wallonia , a project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program and the International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change . In addition to management tasks, he created meta-analytical studies on desertification and deforestation from the perspective of complex, social-ecological land system theory.

From 2006 to 2012 Geist was Professor of Human Geography ( Sixth Century Chair in Human-Environment Interactions ) at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. For the International Geographical Union , Geist served as a member of the steering committee of the Land Use & Land Cover Changes commission from 2004 to 2008 and repeatedly from 2012 to 2016.

From 2013 to 2020 Geist taught economic geography at the International Professional Academy.

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After working in geographic development research on maize and tobacco production in Malawi, Geist presented political ecology as a "new perspective on human-environmental relationships [...] for the first time in the German development debate" in 1992 . The expectation that a “rule-critical perspective” on social relations to nature as the third pillar between human and physiogeography was not fulfilled.

The LUCC project was judged to show "in an almost exemplary manner the range and potential of interdisciplinary opportunities for cooperation from a wide variety of specialist disciplines" on issues relating to the Anthropocene .

The approach of Geist to characterize environmental changes in arid areas in terms of land system theory was rated by Mark Stafford Smith as "the first real attempt to bring these aspects together […] [in] a typology of degradation causes and outcomes".

Research by Geist on global land use has found its way into the IPBES Report 2018 of the World Biodiversity Council and the IPCC Special Report 2019 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change .

In 1998, Geist supported the Cape Town World Bank consultation on the possibilities and limits of global tobacco control as a reviewer. Since then he has accompanied tobacco critical projects worldwide:

  • as scientific advisor to the documentary Rauchopfer by Peter Heller , which was awarded the Gold Grand Prix Leonardo at the 2003 Parma International Film Festival as the best contribution of the year critical of globalization;
  • as a reviewer of a study group of the World Health Organization on alternatives to tobacco growing at their meeting in June 2008 in Mexico City on the basis of Articles 17 & 18 Framework Conventions of the WHO on Tobacco Control (2005);
  • as co-author of a panel study reported by Kelley Lee and colleagues in 2016 that an opinion on the WHO Framework Convention commissioned by British American Tobacco came to the conclusion that the destruction of tropical dry forests “[deforestation] may be the single most negative impact of tobacco cultivation on the environment […] given the results of the study by Geist et al. [2009] "; and
  • as co-author of the first WHO study 2017 on the overall effects of tobacco smoking , which noted the destruction of ecosystems and undesirable economic developments in growing countries in the global south and accused transnational tobacco companies of greenwashing .

Publications (selection)

Books

  • Tobacco and its environmental impact. World Health Organization, Geneva (CH), 2017; together with S. Bialous, C. Curtis, PS Granados, YH Hendlin, H. Eunha, N. Lecours, K. Lee, GE Matt, JPE Quintana, and ET d'Espaignet; free full text
  • The causes and progression of desertification. Routledge, London, 2017 (Paperback, eBook) and Ashgate, Aldershot (UK) & Burlington (VT), 2005 (Hardback); routledge.com
  • Transforming the fringe. In: R. Majoral, H. Jussila, F. Delgado-Cravidão (eds). Environment and Marginality in Geographical Space . Routledge, London, 2017 (Hardback, eBook) and Ashgate, Aldershot (UK), 2000 (Hardback), pp. 87–118; routledge.com
  • "New" corporate environmentalism. In: RM Samson (ed): Supply-chain management - Theories, activities / functions and problems . Nova Science, Hauppage (NY), 2011, pp. 1-37; free full text
  • The tobacco industry in Malawi. In: A. Millington, W. Jepson (eds): Land change science in the tropics . Springer, Dordrecht (NL), 2008, pp. 251-268; together with M. Otañez and J. Kapito; free full text
  • Our earth's changing land. 2 edited volumes. Greenwood Press, Westport (CT) / London, 2006; abc-clio.com
  • Soil mining and societal responses. In: B. Lohnert B, H. Geist (eds). Coping with changing environments . Ashgate, Aldershot (UK) / Brookfield (VT), 1999, pp. 119-148; google.books
  • Political ecology of the Lower Casamance in Senegal (West Africa). In: RB Singh (ed): Disasters, environment and development . Oxford / IBH, New Delhi / Calcutta, 1996, pp. 541-550.
  • How sustainable is the sustainability theorem? In: M. Massarat, HJ Wenzel, B. Sommer, G. Széll (eds.): The Third World and We. Third World Information Center, Freiburg i. Br., 1993, pp. 191-202; iz3w.org

items

  • Rethinking integrative geography - e. B. Anthropocene. Geographica Helvetica 73 (2), 2018, pp. 187-191; free full text
  • Deliberative assessment in complex socioecological systems. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 183 (1/4), 2011, pp. 465–483; together with S. Whitfield and AAR Ioris; free full text
  • Tobacco growers at the crossroads. Land Use Policy 26 (4), 2009, pp. 1066-1079; together with K. Chang, V. Etges, and JM Abdallah; free full text
  • Change or Collapse? Geographische Zeitschrift 94 (3), 2006, pp. 143-159; free full text
  • Causes and pathways of land change in Southern Africa during the past 300 years. Erdkunde 56 (2), 2002, pp. 144–156; free full text
  • Proximate causes and underlying driving forces of tropical deforestation. BioScience 52 (2), 2002, pp. 143-150; together with EF lambin; free full text
  • Global assessment of deforestation related to tobacco farming. Tobacco Control 8 (1), 1999, pp. 18-28; Free full text PMID 10465812 .
  • Exploring the entry points for political ecology in the international research agenda on global environmental change. Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie 43 (3/4), 1999, pp. 158–168; zfw.com
  • The Namwera Mountains. Gaia 7 (4), 1998, pp. 255-264; ingentaconnect.com
  • Tropical forest destruction by tobacco. Geographische Rundschau 50 (5), 1998, pp. 283-290; booklooker.de
  • Alternative farming in Lower Franconia. Communications of the Franconian Geographical Society 40, 1993, pp. 81-102; free full text
  • The orthodox and politico-ecological view of environmental degradation. Die Erde 123 (4), 1992, pp. 283-295; free full text
  • Rural weekly markets in the Thiès region. Applied Geography and Development 36, 1990, pp. 78-98; agd.com
  • Subsistence economy and world market production in a peripheral region of Malawi. Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie 30 (3), 1986, pp. 27-51; zfw.com

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "The only reliable thing is education" - Lower Franconian Memorial Year Foundation honors 25 doctoral students. In: Fränkisches Volksblatt , May 12, 1990.
  2. ↑ GACVS Fellowship Recipient Group II ghi-dc.org Accessed January 3, 2018.
  3. ↑ International Geosphere-Biosphere Program: Land Use and Cover Change. Retrieved April 23, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Scientific contributions while affiliated with University of Aberdeen and other places. at: researchgate.net , accessed January 2, 2018.
  5. ^ IGU Commission on Land Use and Cover Changes.Retrieved February 2, 2018.
  6. ↑ T. Rauch: Four decades of German-language geographic development research in the field of tension between dialectical learning process and zeitgeist. In: Geographische Zeitschrift, 106 (3), 2019, p. 180.
  7. ↑ T. Krings: Human-Environment-Relationships in the Tropics with special consideration of political ecology as the subject of geographical development research. In: Geography circular. (VGDH), No. 149, 1998, p. 22.
  8. ↑ S. Bauriedl: Political Ecology - Non-deterministic, global and material dimensions of nature / society relationships. In: Geographica Helvetica , 71, 2016, p. 345.
  9. ↑ Ehlers E. 2008: The Anthropocene . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt, p. 237.
  10. ^ Mark Stafford Smith: Desertification - Reflections on the mirage. In: RH Behnke, M. Mortimore (eds.): The end of desertification? Disputing environmental change in the drylands. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2016, p. 552.
  11. ↑ Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (2018): The assessment report on land degradation and restoration Chapters 3, 4, 5 & 6, accessed on September 11, 2019.
  12. ↑ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2019): Climate change and land - Summary for policymakers Chapters 3, 4 & 7, accessed on September 1, 2019.
  13. ↑ P. Jha & FJ Chaloupka: Curbing the epidemic - Governments and the economics of tobacco control. World Bank, Washington DC 1999, p. 92. (2003 edition, p. 110). Retrieved July 30, 2017.
  14. ↑ wocomoDOCS: The deadly strategies of the tobacco industry - smoking harms people and nature. Retrieved October 24, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Study group on economically sustainable alternatives to tobacco growing (in relation to Articles 17 and 18 of the Convention). P. 2 (item 6) & P. ​​4 (item 17), accessed July 30, 2017.
  16. ↑ Pain A. et al. 2012: Research and evidence collection on issues related to articles 17 and 18 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. ; quoted from Lee K. et al. 2016: Manage and mitigate punitive regulatory measures, enhance the corporate image, influence public policy . In: Globalization and Health. 12, p. 55. doi: 10.1186 / s12992-016-0192-6 .
  17. ^ World Health Organization: Big Tobacco Leaves Huge Ecological Footprint. May 30, 2017. Retrieved January 3, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Spirit, Helmut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Geist, Helmut J.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Kastl