Glossary of Terms
Built design
Planning and design aimed at reducing environmental impacts of the built environment through developing tools, strategies, advisory services and professional skills. It addresses environmental issues ranging from energy efficiency and water conservation through to environmentally preferable materials and waste avoidance during construction.
Business sustainability
Sound, long-range management of people, resources and the environment that is subject to holistic and continuous improvement. Business sustainability should feed financial benefits directly back into the company's bottom line, as well as meeting its social and environmental obligations.
Climate change
Gradual alterations in worldwide climate patterns due to global warming - the rising temperature of the Earth's surface recorded since the industrial revolution. Compelling evidence exists that much of this warming has been caused by human activities, which emit gases that are changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere and the oceans.
ClimateSmart
A departmental program to foster community involvement in designing, constructing or retro-fitting homes to perform more sustainably - to be water-, energy- and waste- efficient, safe, secure and cost-effective to operate. Such homes will meet current and future housing needs with greater comfort and lifestyle opportunities, as well as delivering continuing financial savings for residents.
Corporate social responsibility
Corporate social responsibility requires that businesses account for, and measure, actual or potential economic, social and environmental impacts of their decisions. It can involve actions being taken that exceed mere compliance with minimum legal requirements. CSR suggests that commercial corporations have a duty of care to all stakeholders in all aspects of business operations. Stakeholders are those influenced by, or who can influence, a business's decisions and actions, including employees, customers, suppliers, community organisations, subsidiaries and affiliates, partners, local neighbourhoods, investors, and shareholders.
Eco-efficiency
Eco-efficiency includes reducing material and energy inputs to goods and services, reducing toxic dispersion, enhancing recyclability, maximising use of renewable resources, and enhancing material durability.
Environmental best practice
An approach to environmentally responsible management that asserts that there is a method, process or activity that is more effective at delivering or improving a particular outcome than any other. It seeks to ensure that, with proper processes, checks and testing, a project can be rolled out and completed with fewer problems and unforeseen complications or consequences.
Greenhouse footprint
Also described as a carbon footprint, the greenhouse footprint is a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment, in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide.
Greenhouse gas
The majority of scientists believe the enhanced greenhouse effect is caused by increased concentrations of gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, per fluorocarbons, hydro fluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride.
Natural amenity
The characteristics that enhance a location as a place to live, and are thus valued by communities, mostly pertaining to the physical rather than social or economic environment.
Stewardship
In general, stewardship is assuming responsibility for taking good care of resources. These resources may be individual, communal, commercial, or environmental, and form part of any community's natural capital.
Sustainability
Sustainable living
Sustainable management
Applying policies, principles or management strategies to secure the continuity of economic, social, governmental and environmental aspects of human society, as well as the non-human environment. It seeks to engage communities so that people and economies can meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present - yet preserving biodiversity and ecosystems - while planning and acting to maintain these ideals in the very long term.
Sustainable development
The most commonly cited definition of sustainable development comes from the UN report Our Common Future: "[meeting] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Sustainable development creates economic growth, which protects the environment, relieves poverty, and does not destroy natural capital in the short term at the expense of long-term development. Such development should effectively encompass three general policy areas: economic, environmental and social.
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Last updated: 15 May 2009