INQUA, the International Union for Quaternary Re-search, was founded in 1928 by a group of scientists seeking to improve understanding of environmental change during the glacial ages through interdisciplinary research. Today, more than 35 member countries, spread throughout the world, contribute to IN-QUA's vitality. INQUA´s basic goal, promoting improved communication and international collaboration in basic and applied aspects of Quaternary research, is achieved mainly through the activities of its commissions and committees: coastal and marine processes; palaeoclimate; palaeoecology and human evolution; stratigraphy and geochronology; terrestrial processes.

The International Lithosphere Program (ILP) seeks to elucidate the nature, dynamics, origin and evolution of the lithosphere through international, multidisciplinary geoscience research projects and coordinating committees. The ILP is charged with promoting multidisciplinary research projects of interest to both the geological (IUGS) and geophysical (IUGG) communities. The ILP seeks to achieve a fine balance between: "addressing societal needs", e.g. understanding natural catastrophes and other solid earth processes that affect the biosphere, providing information for improved resource exploration and environmental protection; and "satisfying scientific curiosity"

The Quaternary Period spans the last 2.6 million years of the Earth's history. The Quaternary is an interval with dramatic and frequent changes in global climate. Warm interglacials alternated with cold ice ages. The Earth is right now entering a time of unusually warm climate. Significant and potentially rapid environmental changes could pose major challenges for human habitability. The expertise of Quaternary scientists is to interpret the changing world of the glacial ages and their impact on our planet's surface environments. Quaternary palaeoclimatic investigations play a key role in the understanding of the possible future climate change on our planet.

SedNet is the European network aimed at incorporating sediment issues and knowledge into European strategies to support the achievement of a good environmental status and to develop new tools for sediment management. Our focus is on all sediment quality and quantity issues on a river basin scale, ranging from freshwater to estuarine and marine sediments.

The Earth Simulator (ES) is the first scientific tool that has given a quantitative jump in simulation science. It is the first powerful supercomputer that has made it possible to simulate the evolution of an entire system at once. Because of this treatment of the entire system, the future evolution of a system can be predicted by simulation, and hence the future world is turned from Science Fiction into Science Reality.

The founding members of the ICDP have developed an organozational structure which is simple in its organization, flexible in its proposed procedures to meet individual project requirements, and inexpensive in its administration. The overall objective of the program structure is to maintain autonomous drilling projects of any type, independently organized and managed in the form of a Joint Research Venture with national, bi-national or multi-national partners, connected through an ICDP funding contribution and committed to certain principles in scientific cooperation and exchange.

The CGMW' aims are to promote, coordinate and publish synthetic Earth sciences maps, at small scale, of continental and / or oceanic areas of the World. It is a non-profit scientific and pedagogic body governed by French law.