Geography, derived from the Greek words for “earth” and “writing”, is one of the oldest forms of spatial knowledge. From the first maps of the known world by Eratosthenes and Ptolemy to the descriptive works of Strabo and Pliny the Elder, classical geography laid the foundations for understanding the Earth as a structured and knowable space. Later, during the Middle Ages, Islamic culture advanced in cartography and navigation, preserving and translating key geographical texts for a new interpretation of the known world.

The rise of modern cartography in the 16th century – especially with Mercator’s projection – represented another leap forward, transforming maps into tools of power and control. In the 19th century, figures such as Carl Ritter and Alexander von Humboldt, inspired by Enlightenment science and Darwinian thought, institutionalised geography as a scientific discipline, linking physical processes with human dynamics. From the 20th century onwards, in the wake of the industrial age and the redrawing of borders through nationalist expansions, geography developed quantitative methods and critical perspectives to address spatial injustices (e.g., unequal access to resources, services, or opportunities based on location), environmental degradation, and urban change.

After the Cold War (1947-1991), globalisation prioritised global flows, relegating the importance of “place” (territory) and promoting a borderless worldview. Technological advances and digital communications reinforced this abstraction, diminishing the value of geographical knowledge as a critical tool and questioning its scientific and educational role. Paradoxically, this occurred at a time when territorial issues – climate change, social inequality, and raw material management – were becoming crucial.

However, globalisation has accentuated territorial imbalances, making geography even more fundamental to understanding today’s world. In this sense, the discipline acquires social relevance by focusing on the local. It allows for a critical analysis of specific territorial imbalances (for instance, inequalities in access to services, concentration of power, or the gap between densely populated and rural areas) and socio-environmental dynamics (for example, the impact of climate change on agriculture, or of tourism on the housing market and the environment). Ultimately, geography uses tools such as land use planning and territorial cohesion strategies to address the root causes of these problems.

Globalisation has accentuated territorial imbalances, making geography even more fundamental to understanding today’s world.

Geography today finds itself at a crossroads. In secondary schools in Europe, it suffers from a lack of curricular stabilisation, with significant disparities in teaching hours, academic weight, and institutional support. Applications for university geography degrees have declined in some countries, particularly in those associated with the social sciences and humanities, leading to its fragmentation within public education systems and institutions. Yet geography is more essential than ever to meet the challenges of our era: strengthening territorial literacy will equip future generations with an understanding of how global processes interact with local realities, enabling them to address contemporary challenges.

The rise of geopolitics

Understanding the influence of geography on political interactions means using geographic factors to achieve political objectives. This has led to an increase in the study of geopolitics, which emerged as a discipline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It focuses on the way in which a country’s location, natural resources, and environment influence its foreign policy, strategic decisions, and international interactions. Geopolitics is a way of understanding the modern world, where countries are connected through competition.

But while geopolitics illuminates state-centred power dynamics, resource competition, and strategic rivalries, it often obscures and downplays crucial aspects of human and environmental realities, such as the lived experiences of populations, the localised impacts of global policies, and the subtle spatial injustices that shape human landscapes.

Unlike reductionist, state-centred approaches, geography reveals the complex multi-scalar connections between human societies and their environments. While geopolitics analyses borders and spheres of influence from the perspective of state power and strategic competition, geography shows their dynamism, permeability, and constant reshaping by human and natural processes.

By adopting an integrative perspective on territory, geography emphasises the interdependence and agency of diverse actors beyond the state, such as local communities and environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs), thus offering a deeper understanding of territorial structure. In this context, the importance of re-establishing the role of geography in public institutions and education systems lies precisely in its ability to go beyond a purely strategic or economic lens, fostering a more holistic, ethical, and grounded engagement with our planet and its inhabitants. It encourages a deeper understanding of the spatial dimensions of power and inequality, which geopolitics often overlooks.

Geography encourages a deeper understanding of the spatial dimensions of power and inequality, which geopolitics often overlooks.

A tool for addressing the climate crisis

The way geography is often taught in schools – as a subject focused on the physical features of territories – fails to convey its true essence as a dynamic and critical discipline centred on the complex interaction between human societies and their environments. In our age of readily available (and often unreliable) digital information, education systems should shift their focus from memorisation to stimulating critical thinking. The teaching of geography should also move in that direction. In this sense, reversing the decline of the discipline in education systems and public institutions is not a matter of nostalgia; it is an urgent necessity to cultivate territorial understanding and action as we face the climate emergency.

Geography provides the essential framework for understanding the spatial implications of the green transition and climate adaptation strategies, grounding abstract political discussions in tangible realities. It helps interpret, for instance, the complex interaction between people and place, such as when analysing coastal erosion in the Netherlands, the socio-economic drivers of depopulation in rural Spain, flash flood patterns in Germany, the challenges of heat islands in metropolitan Paris, the impacts of excessive tourism on the coast of Croatia and other Mediterranean areas, changes in land use due to intensive livestock farming in the interior of Portugal or Spain, and vulnerability to wildfires in the driest parts of Europe.

The analytical tools of geography enable understanding of, and response to, diverse realities, in both an integrated and local way. For example, space technologies (for instance, GIS and remote sensing) are used to map coastal erosion, land-use change, or wildfire risk; statistical and demographic analyses identify the socioeconomic drivers of rural depopulation; spatial modelling and hydrological tools assess flash flood patterns, and so on. Geography links these processes by connecting environmental and social phenomena across multiple spatial levels (local, regional, global) and sectors (agriculture, urban planning, disaster risk management). It also helps us understand the interaction between local and global problems, and offers solutions to environmental and social interdependencies.

These examples demonstrate how geographical understanding is not only theoretical but is crucial for practical and informed action on climate. It follows that Europe’s ecological transition cannot succeed without citizens who are geographically literate. An updated understanding of geography must be at the core of education systems, equipping students to analyse land use conflicts, environmental risks, urbanisation patterns and climate adaptation strategies.

Europe’s ecological transition cannot succeed without citizens who are geographically literate.

Geography in education and public institutions

The prominence of geography in secondary school curricula in Europe varies from country to country. In Spain, for example, it is taught alongside history from the first to the third year of secondary school (which is attended between the ages of 12 and 15). In the fourth year it disappears, only to return in the second year of high school (for children aged between 17 to 18). This means there is a gap just before university.¹ Finland, Norway, and Sweden follow a similar curricula scheme. However, several state agencies in Spain are working to strengthen the role of geography and climate education in future school curricula.

In French high schools, geography carries less weight due to its integration into the broader humanities curriculum, and it is taught with a more global focus, as it is in Ireland. In Germany, geography is a core part of the secondary school curriculum, although in Sekundarstufe II (grades 11 to 13), it is offered as an elective course. In Türkiye, geography education is being rethought for its geopolitical relevance and global role. In Italy, this subject has always received little recognition, both in society and in education. But an Italian minister commission is working to improve its status and recognition.

Beyond the classroom, geographers play a vital role in public administration,² designing urban plans, managing, and protecting the landscape, assessing environmental impacts, advising on mobility and land use policies, and so on. However, institutional recognition remains limited, and some municipalities across Europe lack the territorial expertise to implement sustainable policies, favouring other professions such as architects and engineers to conduct this type of task.

There are many factors that contribute to this. First, a lack of clarity in the definition of the role can generate confusion about what specific skills and competencies define a professional geographer;³ second, geographers “compete” with professionals who have more established legal frameworks, which makes it difficult for them to be seen as experts in shared areas; third, in some countries there is no mandatory professional registration or clear regulatory framework for the professional practice of geography; and fourth, geographers lack visibility in the labour market, largely because the practical applications of geographical knowledge – for example in logistics and strategic business geographical location, environmental impact assessment, and territorial and urban planning – remain poorly understood by some sectors and institutions.

If geographers were integrated into a transdisciplinary team, they would effectively address issues related to spatial knowledge. This would help identify where and why certain problems exist and promote values like sustainability and territorial justice. There is no doubt that if educational value is measured by a subject’s relevance to society, then geography clearly offers great benefits to students who study it.

To enable a meaningful green transition in the European Union, geographical expertise is required in local councils, on climate teams, and in land-use planning units. But a broader cultural shift is also needed, whereby place-based knowledge is valued as much as economic or technological solutions. Geography is the missing link between macro visions and informed territorial action.

Geography is the missing link between macro visions and informed territorial action.

What we lose when geography fades away

In a polarised Europe facing climate change and extremist ideologies, the absence of geographical literacy leads to oversimplified solutions and territorial injustices. Without geographical literacy, ignorance about the planet is encouraged. We risk building policies that are disconnected from the lived realities of people and places, allowing spatial inequalities to grow unchecked and weakening the foundations of participatory democracy. The decline of this discipline is both a symptom and a cause of a larger political drift away from place-based accountability.

A democracy becomes vulnerable when it fails to understand and interact with the landscapes its citizens inhabit – landscapes that are shaped by the interaction between people and nature. For citizens to be empowered, it is imperative that geography be re-established as a fundamental civic competence. Educational authorities, including schools, have the power to transform this dynamic, focusing not only on an educational model centred on productivity and technical skills but on strengthening critical thinking, culture – understood as the appreciation of knowledge, creativity, and humanistic values – and the environment, through ecological awareness and territorial responsibility. This is why we need professionals with integrated territorial and humanistic knowledge, capable of fostering environmentally and socially aware citizens. Geography plays a key role in this task: it promotes environmental awareness, empathy, and social cooperation, making it essential for creating a responsible and engaged society. For this reason, it should be revalued as a core discipline in education.

In conclusion, geographical learning must move beyond description to cultivate critical analysis of the interplay between natural, sociocultural, and economic dynamics. This will enable students and future professionals to analyse the impacts of interregional processes and explore sustainable solutions. However, geography faces key challenges to achieve this.

To succeed, it must first strengthen its presence in secondary and high school curricula, promoting transformative geographic education that integrates critical thinking and territorial awareness, and which gives students the skills needed in their social and professional environments.

Second, geography must adapt and modernise pedagogical approaches, implementing active and participatory methodologies (interactive maps, local case studies and fieldwork) to establish a connection with students’ environments, including everyday territorial issues and concerns such as housing affordability, public transport, cultural identity, or access to green spaces. The professional role of geographers also needs to be recognised, strengthening their presence in key areas such as territorial planning, landscape management, climate adaptation, mobility, and natural resource management.

Moreover, territorial analysis should be promoted and its impacts made visible to guide sustainable public policies based on geographic knowledge and address problems such as climate change, inequality, and environmental degradation. Finally, building educational and territorial networks at the European and international levels is needed to connect innovative pedagogical, scientific, and technical experiences aimed at sustainability and territorial justice.

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1. de Miguel González, R. (2017). Spain. In: Muñiz Solari, O., Solem, M., Boehm, R. (eds) Learning Progressions in Geography Education. International Perspectives on Geographical Education. Springer, Cham. ↩︎
2. Manuz Santiago, I. (2011) La ordenación del territorio en la administración autonómica. Aportaciones de los geógrafos. In: V. Gonzálvez Pérez and A. Marco Molina (eds). Geografía. Retos ambientales y territoriales, (pp.225-231). Universidad de Alicante. ↩︎
3. Pellicer, F. (2011) El geógrafo, versátil frente a la incertidumbre. In: V. Gonzálvez Pérez and A. Marco Molina (eds). Geografía. Retos ambientales y territoriales, (pp. 233-241).Universidad de Alicante. ↩︎