to ask the IGU to change the venue of the next Regional Meeting

The invitation to hold an IGU Regional Conference in Santiago, Chile was extended by the Chilean Institute of Military Geography, the Chilean IGU member organization. The IGU Executive Committee accepted the invitation in May 2008 and announced the location of that meeting following the Tunis IGU General Assembly in August 2008. The IGU and the Conference Local Organizing Committee have widely publicized the plans to hold the meeting in Santiago at the Army Military School since the IGU accepted Chile’s invitation.

The current and past IGU Executive Committees have long been concerned about the limited participation in IGU affairs and meetings by geographers from South America. Since the first Geographical Congress in 1871, only one Congress (Rio de Janeiro in 1956) has been held in the region and only three Regional Conferences (Havana in 1995, Mexico City in 1966, and Sao Paulo in 1982). A small conference with limited participation was held under IGU auspices in Havana in 2005. In addition to the few IGU meetings that have been hosted in Latin America, comparatively few Latin American geographers attend IGU meetings elsewhere or are members of IGU Commissions. Accordingly, the IGU Executive Committee was extremely pleased to receive the invitation to meet in Santiago.

It is important to understand that although the IGU’s Conferences and Congresses are called IGU meetings, the IGU itself has only the most tenuous ownership of each of its Conferences and Congresses. The IGU is not in a position to provide financial support for these meetings; all funds needed to put on each meeting are raised by Local Organizing Committees. For that reason primarily, as well as the impracticality of selecting a specific meeting facility in cities they do not know well or at all, members of the IGU Executive Committee rely largely on the judgment of each Local Organizing Committee for meeting site selection. When there have been differences of opinion between the IGU and a Local Organizing Committee regarding the facility to be used for an IGU meeting, the Local Organizing Committee has prevailed because that body pays the bills and bears the risk of a financial loss should meeting participation not meet expectations. IGU Congresses and Regional Conferences are heavily subsidized by the countries and committees that host them, which places the IGU very much in the position of a guest whose visits costs its hosts a great deal of money and hard work.

The IGU Executive Committee respects the reasons some individuals may object to meetings held in some countries or in specific facilities, but the IGU is not—as a guest organization—in a position to revise arrangements that were made two or more years ago and that have proved workable in the past: the International Cartographic Association held its Congress in Santiago in 2009 at the Army Military School where the IGU will meet this coming November. I attended that conference and found the meeting well organized, productive, scientifically sound, and convivial. I am certain that the same conditions will prevail for the IGU meeting.

The questions that have been raised over the last several weeks about holding the IGU Conference under military auspices and about the Institute of Military Geography’s role as Chile’s IGU member lie outside the IGU’s purview. The IGU is constrained by its own governance documents from interfering in the internal affairs of the geographical communities of its member countries. Any change in the existing arrangements regarding Chile’s membership in the IGU must originate in Chile rather than with the IGU.

The members of the IGU Executive Committee ask that you bear in mind the factors described above in your further consideration of the questions you and other colleagues have raised regarding the location, venue, and sponsorship of the 2011 IGU Regional Conference. In particular, we ask that you visit the Conference web site (http://www.ugi2011.cl/) and note the composition of the various Conference committees and the reports of meetings held with Chilean and other Latin American geographers. Members of the Chilean military will certainly be present in November, but they will in no way dominate or influence the composition of the meeting’s scientific program.

As the IGU respects your opinions and choices, we hope that you will understand the constraints under which the IGU operates in scheduling its conferences and congresses, and that you will evaluate the promise of the 2011 Conference on its intrinsic scientific merits. We hope to see you in Santiago, but if you choose not to come, please consider joining us in Köln in 2012.

Ron Abler