ABSTRACT
The organizers of the 28th International Geographical Congress in the Hague, 1996, required the Commissions and Study Groups to hold their meetings during the Congress in order to offer participants insight into their activities. The Study Group on Development Issues in Marginal Regions, as it was called, developed new research directions, based on a wider interpretation of the term 'marginal' and expanding into human strategies responding to environmental and socioeconomic change. The efforts of the first two years as a Sub-Commission were rewarded during the Paris IGC when it received the status of an IGU Study Group, named Study Group on Development in Highlands and High Latitude Zones. One of the major gaps within the Study Group and Sub-Commission has been the conspicuous absence of Africa. The Study Group on Development Issues in Marginal Regions, on the occasion of its Mendoza meeting in 1995, decided upon a number of paper sessions to be held on that occasion.
