There seems to be no consensus about whether the world is currently going through an un-preceded crisis. Clearly 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, etc. The good old days were terrible! However, a number of unacceptable situations remain in our world and improvements are still urgently needed. The world is a complex organism, expe-riencing numerous troubles: economic and financial crisis, environmental crisis, agricultural crisis, sani-tary crisis, psychological and identity-related crisis, crisis of values and sense, political crisis, etc. When faced with such a systemic crisis, the solution must be global. How can geosynthetics and the geosynthet-ics community contribute to the resolution of these crises and help heal the world? Technology is usually emphasized but will not be sufficient. What values should we expect now from the International Geosyn-thetics Society (IGS), 35 years after its creation? The objective of this Giroud lecture is to analyze the re-cent lectures and papers in geosynthetics to see what the evidence says about our contribution today to supplying water quality to all, feeding the world, protecting our environment, mitigating natural disasters, bringing economic solutions, and connecting people to help them to learn to live together according to universal human values.
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