Lexicon
Basic information
Project Title
Lexicon
Full project title
Lexicon
Category
Shaping a circular industrial ecosystem and supporting life-cycle thinking
Project Description
Lexicon of Sustainability lists and explains 150 of the most relevant terms related to sustainable development, belonging to one or more topics: Built environment, Energy, Health & environmental protection, Resource management, Social responsibility, Sustainability basics, indicators & metrics, Sustainable business practices. It is a must-read for working professionals of different levels in different fields, who didn't have any formal training in sustainability, but recognize its importance.
Geographical Scope
National
Project Region
Serbia
Urban or rural issues
It addresses urban-rural linkages
Physical or other transformations
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
EU Programme or fund
No
Description of the project
Summary
Knowing and understanding sustainability terminology is an important part of general knowledge, professional improvement and lifelong learning, especially for those people who matured personally and professionally over the years when sustainability hasn’t been such a prominent subject as it is today. "Lexicon of sustainable development" is a systematization of sustainability related words, phrases and topics from various sources: academic and non-academic; public and private sector; professional, national and international organizations. Collecting the material has been initiated by the desire to provide understandable and diverse selection of terms explaining the concept and principles of SD to people outside institutional and academic circles that dictate the way this subject is presented to wider public- often setting an overly scientific or, in contrast, overly infantile tone. Additionally, the lexicon helps users differentiate between commonly confused and wrongly interchangeably used similar or connected terms. It can be searched in alphabetic order, randomly, by topic/area or following connections between terms. It can help readers in getting better insight in a specific topic/area or sustainability in general. It also helps Serbian public tracking the appropriate translation of the original, English words, phrases, names etc. The aim of the lexicon is not just raising sustainability awareness, but to raise competence level and initiate action, which is why it is predominately targeting working population. We are hoping to get funding for this project is order to make it as attractive, easily available and widely promoted as possible.
Key objectives for sustainability
UN Sustainability Development Goals, which at the first sound very general and unrealistic, after being broken down to components and backed up by indicators, metrics, calculations, reporting directions etc. become overly complex and hard to comprehend for majority of people outside the narrow circle of sustainability professionals, scientists and policy makers. Many employers are also often undereducated and underinformed about SDGs themselves, or they keep companies’ sustainability targets and strategies at a very high level, often being hesitant about dissemination across the organization as sustainable transformation is still pretty much a testing ground. Many professionals, although highly exposed to sustainability terminology, do not have access to formal information sources, unless their workplace requires training in sustainability field. Employees who are familiar with sustainability strategy of their company, often fail to see possibilities for sustainability principles implementation in their private life. And last, but not the least, members of working population who possess personal interest in sustainability principles and act according to them in their private lives, are not aware of mechanisms that would enable their companies to implement sustainability principles on organizational level and across supply chains. Poor knowledge level of people in business environment about sustainability topics leaves them subjected to manipulation, fluctuations on markets and uncertainties of the future. Most of all, they fail to see the option of "being smart about sustainability", rather than just "being conscious about sustainability". These are some of the reasons our project is directed towards dissemination of information on sustainability across working population of different qualifications and experience levels.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The advantage of presenting a complex topic through a vocabulary format is in the organized appearance and easy navigation. The users are familiar with this format, while a slightly more advanced user will be able to navigate the content in other ways, not just in alphabetical order. Downloading the e-book will allow the user to explore the content offline. Using either the e-book or the web site requires basic level of digital literacy. To make the content more appealing and interesting, beside basic explanations of the term, additional information are aiding users in seeing "the big picture", making connections and references between terms and linking the term to the local context or globally familiar names, events, symbols etc. Statistical data and illustrations might be used occasionally to aid visual comprehension and help with "putting things into perspective".
Key objectives for inclusion
Considering short timeframes for 2030. and 2050. sustainability targets, SDG communication and education strategies need to pick up pace by urging collective change of attitudes, habits and common practices. General public, especially working population, needs to be able to understand sustainability related topics and terms far better then they do now in order to make connections between their own actions, expectations and prospects (personal and professional) and the conversations taking place at the global level. In Serbia, sustainability issue is particularly institutionalized and non-participatory, local authorities lack capacity, professional associations are siloed and lack wider participation, educational system reforms are too slow. Projects backed by EU and other donors, with participation of NGOs, often have a narrow focus, aiming for near-term measurable results. Serbian general public, especially working population, is not given enough credit and importance in the sustainability arena.
Results in relation to category
The lexicon is to be promoted through selected business portals, with links to a dedicated web site. E-book will be made available to partnering organizations and selected business community representatives. Official launch of the Web site would be organized with a partnering media organization. Copy of the e-book, for download and sharing, will be made available to dedicated web site's visitors upon submission of request. The aim is to promote and distribute the lexicon outside the institutional framework. Trial period will be one year, with additional year upon improvements and adjustments to the web site which are to be made after the first year of implementation, based on web site usage and performance analytics. Reports on performance after the first and the second year of implementation will be prepared and published.
How Citizens benefit
This lexicon is potentially the first in series of publications directed to bringing sustainability topics closer to the people, even the science-based targets, indicators and metrics, which are to illustrate reasoning behind concepts and mechanisms of sustainable development. The aim of limiting the range to 150 terms is incentivizing users to explore the lexicon in total, not partially- it should possess the quality of being comprehensive, without being extensive. One of the goals is breaking the biggest misconception about sustainability- that it is all about environment protection. The plan is to make the lexicon interactive, downloadable, shareable and, through online use, we would be able to conduct analytics which would help in creating consecutive editions and more sector-oriented editions with involvement of other stakeholders.
Physical or other transformations
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Innovative character
Mainstream actions are still too limited in number and scale, so they require supplemental activities and initiatives. Beside that, one of the goals of this project is breaking down sustainability-knowledge silos. The lexicon is innovative in:
- the way subject is presented, broken down to more or less familiar terms, which interconnect to explain more complex topics/terms;
- the way subject is explained, making terms understandable to a large group of people, engaged in different fields and at different experience levels;
- the way subject is translated into local context by using original, English words, with Serbian official or potential translations, raising awareness about the need for parallel language transformation and evolution;
- the way material is accessed and explored, offering multiple ways of access, content search, selection and learning.
- the way subject is presented, broken down to more or less familiar terms, which interconnect to explain more complex topics/terms;
- the way subject is explained, making terms understandable to a large group of people, engaged in different fields and at different experience levels;
- the way subject is translated into local context by using original, English words, with Serbian official or potential translations, raising awareness about the need for parallel language transformation and evolution;
- the way material is accessed and explored, offering multiple ways of access, content search, selection and learning.
Disciplines/knowledge reflected
In the design stage preliminary word/phrase/topic selection which is submitted with this application will be filtered in collaboration with specialist from different fields to confirm relevance, validity and accuracy of the content and to fine-tune presentation to make it more attractive and user-friendly. The project still has not been implemented yet, so the other part of this question can be answered after the implementation stage.
Methodology used
Selection of terms is based on their relative significance in the context of sustainability and connections with other selected terms, while explanations are derived and presented in accordance with information from reliable sources, such as international, national and professional institutions, organizations and associations. First and the most important criteria in terms selection process is intelligibility of explanations and definitions to an average professional who has no education or training in the sustainability field. Terms which are important, but subjectively surpass expected level of understanding of an average representative of the target group, have intentionally been left out. Furthermore, we were seeking to achieve a balance between terms an average representative of the target group is less familiar with, mostly belonging to „Sustainability metrics and indicators“, „Sustainable business practices“ and „Resource management“ sections/topics, and those which they can more easily relate to, belonging to „Social equity and responsibility“, „Health and environmental protection“ and „Sustainability basics“ sections. Out of the 8 sections/topics the lexicon is divided into, terms primarily belonging to each of the section make up 10% to 20% of the lexicon. As can be expected, there is overlapping and many terms are relevant for several topics, but for the purpose of balancing the content, there is one primary section for each term. Another criteria was including interconnected terms which jointly help in understanding a complex or a broad area of sustainable development, strenghtenning readers ability to comprehend and make conclusions about cause and effect mechanisms in the world around us and the full range and reach of their own actions’ effects. A good example of this are many terms belonging to „Health and environmental protection“ section which aim to explain that negative impacts on our environment translate into negative effects on our own health.
How stakeholders are engaged
This project is an individual initiative of a person whose self-driven interest in sustainability has led through several years of extensive research and exploration of various sources, most of them being outside Serbia and in English language, which is an obstacle for a large number of people looking for high quality, yet manageable, content on sustainable development. This research was conducted in parallel with master studies on smart cities, training on circular economy, professional engagement in construction procurement and permaculture methods exploration for a private weekend house project- which led the author to realizing there are many different approaches to sustainability at every person's reach, and that we don't have the time or luxury of pursuing only those driven by compliance with international agreements and/or local regulations. Although not many stakeholders will be engaged in the design stage, large number of potential users and analytics driven by their engagement has the potential of making the project very interactive and useful for future sustainability awareness and competence raising campaigns in Serbia and Western Balkans.
Global challenges
Sustainable transformation, energy crisis, climate change, resource management, social injustice and inequity are some of the many challenges addressed in the lexicon. Enabling and supporting understanding of these global challenges at the local level, as well as presenting some of the possible solutions which can be adjusted to local context is the first step toward reducing and resolving those challenges. Even though this is just the basic level of sustainability-driven actions, unfortunately in many countries and many communities a lot of work still needs to be done on that level, before society as a whole can step up to the challenges. This project is addressing global sustainability problems at the level where local community realistically stands. Improvements on this level, addressing large target group, can have significant effect taking in account collective power of small changes.
Learning transferred to other parties
As in any other project, targets and target population need to be set very carefully, to allow for scalability and transferability of the concept/method. In subsequent projects, tools used to address different (younger) audience could be changed. Selection of terms comprising the lexicon could be fine-tuned and adjusted to target different sectors/industries, regardless of them being at the forefront of sustainable transformation at the moment or not (eg. energy, transport, construction, agriculture, healthcare, tourism, fashion, creative etc.).
