Defining Sustainability: Data from a Cross-Government Hub for Climate Action
This talk will focus on empirical data collected from members of a cross-government hub whose scope is to connect, discuss and find practical solutions to our climate crisis. Members belong to the public sector including the civil service and the National Health Service. As such, it is a diverse community of people who have been brought together by a common mission, wishing to collaborate on climate issues.
The heterogeneity of professional backgrounds in the hub means that members may understand the concept of sustainability slightly differently from one another. Furthermore, the difference may be present both at the interpersonal level (dissimilarities among people) and at the intrapersonal level (dissimilarities in the same person). Intrapersonal differences can be due to the discrepancy between an individual’s personal belief of what sustainability is and the working definition provided by their employer in their job.
Data are collected via the administration of a short survey which can be completed voluntarily and anonymously by members of the hub. The questions posed in the survey are:
- What does sustainability mean to you?
- How do you enact this?
- What does it mean within your area of work?
- How is this enacted?
- How do you reconcile the two if different?
- What kind of impacts has your membership to the hub had on your professional and personal behaviours towards sustainability?
- What is one key change that you are hoping to see enacted in your work with regards to sustainability?
The findings will be presented thematically, and the discussion will centre around aspects of tension, behaviours, and impact. Ultimately the scope is to share the lived experiences of participants as actors invested in sustainability both in a personal and professional capacity.