A couple of weeks ago, a colleague rekindled my dedication to what I do for a living as a geographer and a climate change advocate. We met at a post-work climate change exhibition, where we started chatting about our Physical Geography degrees, backgrounds and the exhibited paintings. This led to an exploration of our shared interest in geography, the outdoors, and fieldwork.

I’ll spare some of the details but one of the topics that came up was the Royal Geographical Society’s Explore - Expedition and Fieldwork conference - unbeknownst to me as an RGS Fellow, as its details were buried in my email newsletters. The conference was taking place that weekend and with minimal persuasion, I signed up for the event. The conference brought together passionate geographers from diverse fields, including academia, music, arts, medicine, and even the corporate world.

True dedication and commitment by the gutsy explorers!

I even caught up with some familiar faces from previous encounters (in some cases with people I met more than 6 years ago!). Admittedly I got really excited with the mini talks on the importance of fieldwork prep, equipment adaptation and new cool technologies on remote sensing data and loggers (yeees!). Truly amazing! Some speakers even shared their exploratory journeys through through music and art 🌍👩🏼‍🎨🎻 which added a unique perspective to the conference.

However, the most remarkable aspect of the day was the awe-inspiring photographic footage and stories from explorers’ field trips. These research expeditions are rare in today’s corporate world, particularly in remote regions like the Arctic, but play a crucial role in addressing climate change. Despite the sobering facts about the Arctic’s rapid melting, the conference served as a powerful reminder that in-situ data and outdoor fieldwork are still at the epicentre (no pun intended) in combating climate change.

As much as I love the desk work as a GIS consultant, the coding 👨🏼‍💻, the creation and analysis of spatial datasets, nothing beats the exhilarating feeling of the commitment to geographical research through fieldwork. So yeah who knows? Perhaps a sabbatical in the near future should be in the works…

Summing up, the conference reinvigorated my passion for geography, exploring the outdoors and being in nature and I believe I speak for everyone when I say, it reminded us to go out there, explore, educate others, gather data and Play for the Earth! Our home, our children’s home and the home for future generations!!

PS. The Conferences Of the Parties (COP27) is well underway in Sharm El-Sheikh and before sharing some outcomes and thoughts on the future commitments, I suggest to visit their site for some daily updates. Only if you fancy!