The IGU Commission Excellence Award winner for 2021 is the IGU Commission on Rural Sustainability. The award recognizes the IGU Commission (or Task Force) that is judged as most successfully advancing the objectives of the IGU in, for example, encouraging and facilitating the involvement of young researchers, female researchers and researchers from low income countries in Commission activities, organising or co-organising scientific meetings or workshops of high academic quality and in publishing peer-reviewed publications in the form of books/monographs/peer reviewed articles.
The winner of the 2021 award, based on evidence in the annual report, is the Commission on Rural Sustainability, jointly chaired by Professors Serge Schmitz, Prof Valerià PaüL.The Commission is very active and highly productive. Since its founding year (1992), the Commission has held annual seminars, which represent its most important activity. Moreover, it participates consistently in IGU Congresses and Conferences by organizing sessions. The IGU CSRS collaborates with other IGU commissions and related international, intergovernmental or inter- and multi-disciplinary groups. Academic dissemination has been a central concern of the IGU CSRS since its inception. Most of the early seminars’ papers were published in conference proceedings books, or as peer-reviewed articles in classified scientific journals (commonly, by means of a special issue).
The Commission has been successful in increasing its membership, with members from low income countries, and such countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are well represented on the Commission’s membership roster, which now counts more than 900 contacts. The Commission is active in spreading the word about its work through a well-organized website and Facebook group. The website is updated, and includes a section on previous publications from the commission and another on previous reports from the IGU CSRS SC.
