IGU Commission Excellence Award 2023

I am delighted to report that the IGU Commission Excellence Awards Committee has unanimously recommended that the award for 2023 should be jointly conferred upon the IGU Commission on Local and Regional Development and the IGU Commission on Land Use and Land Cover Change. At our recent meeting of the IGU Executive Committee in Nanjing, the recommendation was ratified. I copy an extract of the Committee’s report as follows:

The Commissions are both highly active and productive. “Land Use and Land Cover Change”(LUCC) and “Local and Regional Development” (LRD) have organized a large number of meetings and sessions at IGU thematic conferences, as well as at other independent scientific events in different countries (e.g. Romania, South Africa). The two commissions have worked in close collaboration on a regular basis, each organizing an annual IGU Commission meeting that, without being branded as a thematic conference, brings together their fields of study and combining them under the theme of a particular topic. LUCC has organized sessions at GeoSus 2023 in Beijing, China, while LRD organized sessions in association with AAG2024. Both commissions are organizing pre-congress meetings in connection with the upcoming IGU Congress in Ireland: LUCC in Cork, and LRD in Dublin. Meanwhile, both are participating fully in developing the proposal for an IGU Thematic Conference in October 2025, in Lima, Peru. Their dynamism is also reflected in their wide-ranging collaborations within the IGU, and through multiple academic collaborations across many different countries. Commission members are also highly active in editing journals and publishing articles and books.

Accordingly, the IGU Commissions on Local and Regional Development and Land Use and Land Cover Change are declared joint winners of the IGU Commission Excellence Award for 2024. The award is accompanied by a supplement to your respective annual operating grants, and an invitation to present a plenary lecture at a future major IGU event.

Congratulations on this fine achievement.

Michael E Meadows
President: International Geographical Union 2020-24