Meanings and More…: Policy Brief of the ICCA Consortium no. 7

Abstract

In 2018 the Council of the ICCA Consortium decided to develop a lexicon of meaningful, and at times complex, concepts and terms frequently used in its work, policies and relations with its Members and Partners. A few specific papers had been commissioned and prepared before, but no attempt had been made to collate working definitions of frequent use, while many felt a need for such a reference compendium. This need was evident also because the Consortium has highlighted and adopted new ways of referring to phenomena that, historically, had not been conceptually analysed. First among these phenomena are the very ICCAs—territories of life at the heart of the Consortium’s work. This document is the result of the Council’s decision. It is a rich beginning, expected to evolve and be further integrated and enriched in the years to come. We decided to publish it as part of our Policy Brief Series, as many of the concepts and terms collected here are crucial in the policies of the Members, Partners and international institutions that the Consortium is hoping to positively influence through its work. Most of all, this document is meant to stimulate thinking, debate, joint analysis, learning and action within the Consortium’s membership. It is only as a result of these collective discussions and concrete initiatives that the ‘meanings’ of our collective language will emerge (and evolve). The concepts and terms collated here are relatively few. We thus decided to list them not in alphabetical order but in our suggested order of reading or glancing through (one of the many possible ones). Kindly consult the index below to reach the desired items.