About

This website was produced with the objective of demonstrating how framing and metaphors can be applied to help communicate the aims and objectives of sustainability standards more effectively to civil society, policy makers, businesses and the general public.

It’s part of a larger project led by the Pacific Institute in partnership with ISEAL Alliance, OneWorldStandards, the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development and Real Reason, using “framing” to demystify key concepts and issues related to sustainability standards in order to communicate their unique value in supporting sustainable development.

The project brought together standards practitioners, intergovernmental representatives, academics, and civil society in an extensive discussion process. Amongst the major conclusions was the identification of two core needs: to better understand the relationship and role that standards have with public governance and the need to develop and communicate a common narrative that contextualizes the benefits of standards in meeting sustainable development objectives.

This websites directly address these needs as a showcase of “framing” tools to communicate sustainability standards’ value proposition to governments, businesses, and the general public.

“Framing” is the application of the theory of cognitive linguistics to the communication of ideas.

Cognitive linguistics proposes that the human mind understands and processes ideas naturally by metaphor and analogy, rather than by pure logic.

The words and images we use to present an idea involuntarily trigger pre-existing models and assumptions which have a critical influence on the way the idea are understood. Thus, we can communicate more effectively by being mindful of the language we use to present an idea – and of the metaphors that our language trigger.

In this project we used this insight to identify and develop two different metaphors that are useful for explaining sustainability standards more generally: one of standards as Maps, and another of standards as Filters.

• Maps: This metaphor addresses the need for guidance and simplicity: for businesses to navigate sustainability in a complex technical and market landscape.
• Filters: This metaphor addresses people’s desire to live their lives better and more sustainably. The additional value of this metaphor is to make the choices (for consumers) simpler and easier.

We produced three slidecasts to demonstrate how “maps” and “filters” metaphors, combined with language and illustration can be used in different framing context (communication, governance and market) that is appropriate to the context and the target audience.

Governance context: we use the metaphors to discuss the roles of citizens, democracy, good governance, accountability, transparency

Communication context: we use the metaphors to discuss labelling, communicating expectations, needs, entering into conversations with stakeholders, making sure that information is available, is clear, and can be understood.

Markets context: we use the metaphors to discuss the roles of consumers, businesses, market strategies, corporate social responsibility, supply chains, production, consumption and added value.

To find out more, go to our project website “Framing Sustainability Standards”.