Why Sustainable WOC?

Why we decided to take a little bit different path of organizing World Championship is already clear. But why did we decided to talk about it as a Sustainable WOC?

Thoughts about environmentally friendly organizing of WOC accompanies our preparations from the very beginning. After few months of thinking we have finalized our concept and started to think how to introduce it to the public. We looked for an easy to understand name that will depict our concept precisely, will be short and will attract runners, spectators, fans and simply everybody who is just passing by. In the end we have opt for Sustainable WOC because we are convinced it is the most suitable one. Why?

We aimed to avoid negative connotation some words related to ecology sometimes evoke. Instead of criticizing and ordering what should everyone do we want to serve as a good practice example and hand our ideas down in a natural way. We wish to show that environmentally friendly behaviour is something normal and if we choose the right tactics, then not only nature, but also humans can benefit from it.
We feel like sustainability holds a neutral position in our society. However, the term itself can be considered a bit vague, complicated and hard to comprehend. We see this fact as an opportunity to make our participants more familiar with sustainability principles and ideally inspired to follow them in their everyday life.

Sustainable WOC also goes together with a vision of IOF, which considers sustainability as one of the three crucial values of orienteering. Orienteering is seen as an ethical, inclusive and sustainable sport respecting natural environment and promoting environmentally friendly behaviour.
And most importantly, without originally (having this in our minds) aiming for this, our main three goals – to organize a big sporting event with minimal negative impact on natural environment when saving the money and cultivating social relations, go along with conception of sustainability: to balance economic, social and environmental aspects of our life accompanied with responsibility and respect to other humans, culture, traditions, living and nonliving nature as well as future generations.

In other words, we attempt to organize such a WOC, that with reasonable financial support minimizes its environmental and social impact.
We will get closer to the way how we want to do it in next article ?.