Healing the world: a geosynthetics solution

There seems to be no consensus about whether the world is currently going through an unpreceded crisis. The conditions of life have greatly improved since the 17th century in terms of food quality and quantity, water quality, life expectancy, poverty, violence, environment, freedom, social equality, education, and so on. Some could argue that the good old days were terrible! However, a number of unacceptable conditions remain in our world and new ones have emerged, all requiring urgent improvements. The world is a complex organism, experiencing numerous troubles: economic and financial crises, environmental crises, agricultural crises, sanitary crises, psychological and identity-related crises, crises of values and sense, political crises, and so on. When faced with such a systemic crisis, the solution must be global. How can geosynthetics and the geosynthetics community contribute to resolving these crises and help to heal the world? The objective of this Giroud lecture is to analyse recent developments in geosynthetics in search of evidence of our contribution today to ensuring water quality for all, feeding the world, protecting the environment, mitigating natural disasters, facilitating economic solutions, and connecting people to help them to learn to live together according to universal human values.