EARTh terminological content is derived from various multilingual and monolingual sources of controlled environmental terminology:
    • GEMET - GEneral Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus
    • EnvDev, the Terminological Bulletin for the Rio de Janeiro Conference on Environment and Development
    • IPPC glossaries
    • UNEP EnVoc
    • Italian Earth Sciences Thesaurus

plus other thesauri and documents concerning specific sectors like inland waters, pollution and climate changes, environmental safety and disasters management, etc.. The selection, as well as the semantic and morphological processing of this terminology, is still in progress and requires the management of problems connected with the utilization of multiple sources, developed in different operational fields and characterized by different approaches, concerning conceptual structuring and terminological representation.
A further conceptual and terminological enrichment, and increased semantic control of the system was defined and partially implemented. It must be said that the incompleteness of the available terminology depends not only on the possible gaps of the sources or on the evolution of knowledge and technical language used in the environmental field - that requires a periodical updating of the terminological systems - but also and perhaps mostly on the kind of approach utilized by these sources. Usually, the environment was analysed with a static and sectorial approach, reflecting mainly a vision of the environment pertaining to classic science or to environmental policy that transforms its paradigms in operational terms. This implies, for example, limited openings to the development of contemporary science, even if they have a prominent role in offering renewed approaches and methods to analyse the environmental issues. One goal of our present work is to adopt a more inclusive approach, concerning both conceptual coverage and semantic organization.
Through managing multilingualism, issues of cultural diversity will also be taken into consideration. Structural divergences that could concern multilingual thesauri -here we are referring to regional diversities that happen in the context of a common general culture, as the Western culture- will be considered. But problems posed by cultures that are epistemologically far apart from ours will also be considered. The feasibility to open the Thesaurus to a really multicultural dimension will be evaluated.
The thesaurus is constantly updated. At present, it contains about 14.500 terms, in English and Italian. It is provided with hierarchical relations and classified according to a matrix system.