Navigating the lingo of greener living isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve created a glossary of common words and phrases you might see in your quest for greener days.
Animism, Nature spirituality
Animism is an overarching term for an ancient form of spirituality that many hunter-gatherers and First Nations people of the present day hold to be culturally important. While Permaculture is a scientific discipline, its modern emergence is, in many ways, a result of spiritual dissatisfaction with environmental destruction, and a movement to learn from our ancestors and present day Indigenous people to hold nature sacred, to respect and revere the Earth, and to work to promote, enhance, learn from, and heal all life.
RELATED TO: Pagan religion, New Age spirituality
Aquaponics
Aquaponics is a combination of the terms ‘aquaculture’ and ‘hydroponics’. It involves constructing tanks that create a miniature ecosystem of nutrient exchange between fish and edible plants. Fish excrement contains nutrients that fertilize many garden plants, and plants produce oxygen and clean the water for the fish. The fish can be fed with worms or even with chicken excrement. This allows a system that feeds itself, rather than producing waste.
Biome
A biome is a region of land designated to have specific climate characteristics, and therefore supports a list of species that are adapted to live and thrive within this biome.
FOR EXAMPLE: ‘Cacti are adapted to survive in a desert biome, with high temperatures and low humidity.‘
HYPONYMOUS OF: Climate Zone (one climate zone can contain multiple biomes)
HYPERNYMOUS OF: Ecosystem (one biome can contain multiple ecosystems)
Carbon Footprint
Carbon footprint is a way of measuring the amount of carbon dioxide gas emitted by a process, person, or business. Reducing one’s carbon footprint is a method that may slow climate change. However, it is important to note that the complexity of anthropogenic climate change goes far beyond carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the over-focus on this particular variable can sometimes obscure other important processes that are affecting the speed of climate change.
Degrowth / Energy Descent
Degrowth refers to the process of deliberately slowing down and, in the future, reducing economic growth in order to live more respectfully on Earth and in accordance with permaculture principles. This form of economic policy is advocated by David Holmgren (the main co-founder of Permaculture) and expanded upon by Ted Trainer.
RELATED TO: Voluntary Simplicty
Ecosystem, Ecology
An ecosystem is a network of life-forms that interact, support, and compete with each other, while also interacting with habitats nonliving elements such as bodies of water, atmospheric flux, and land. Ecology is a field of science within biology that examines ecosystems, and links and relationships between life-forms, including forms of symbiosis.
RELATED TO: Food web
HYPERNYMOUS OF: Habitat (Habitats are contained within ecosystems)
Ecovillage
An ecovillage or eco-village is a community of people, intentionally formed around the idea of settling a specific area of land with the goal of restoring the land and living in harmony with nature, while living comfortably, providing for the needs of humans and other species who live there together.
HYPONYMOUS WITH: Intentional Community (an ecovillage is one type of intentional community).
Edge Effect
This is a permaculture concept that suggests that small areas of land where habitats overlapping and intersecting create extra productivity, because species adapted for habitats learn over time how to survive and thrive in both habitats. Consider how deer proliferate close to urban locations but are more sparse deeper in the woods, even though urban zones are riskier for them. This is because living on the periphery of the woods provides some measure of protection and some food availability, which is more advantageous than having a greater measure of one and a deficit in another. Permaculture designers can deliberately create landscapes that elongate edges.
Gaia Education
Gaia Education is a nongovernmental organization, founded in 1998, that provides education and skills to ecologically conscious students. It is one of the major education providers of sustainable and ecological curricula, and maintains ties to major ecovillages around the world. If Permaculture education can be seen as a grassroots, bottom-up curriculum that adapts Bill Mollison’s work to a local context, this organization approaches its certification process more institutionally, and provides broadly applicable eduction in the dimensions of worldview, ecological science, economics, and sociopsychology.
Geodesic dome
This hemi-spherical structure is built from the tessellation of a series of triangular frames, with a hexagon on the top. It often has a canvas laid atop the frame, and the structure distributes weight evenly, allowing it to bear a heavy load. These structures are often used as places of community gatherings, and they have an unusual acoustic profile.
Greenwashing
This is a term used to criticize a campaign, organization, person, or company that promotes ecological virtues on a surface level, but also is allegedly responsible for significant ecological damage at the same time. As such, greenwashing can be used as an accusation of hypocrisy.
FOR EXAMPLE: A major oil company pumping out billions of barrels of oil also runs a tree-planting campaign in a small area, and then uses the tree-planting campaign as a public relations improvement exercise, might have said exercise called a ‘greenwashing stunt’.
Groupthink
From social psychology, this term indicates that a group of people might become less openly critical of an idea while working in said group than they otherwise would be in an individual setting, because they would not like to be seen openly as unlikable or negative. This particular concept is relevant to permaculture and ecological activism, because in socially insular, small circles, when discussing content that is often outside of the mainstream but spoken in good faith, it can be easier to be convinced at the same time of spurious hypotheses that are spoken with intent to create a cult mentality or to mislead people.
FOR EXAMPLE: Small community gatherings can create opportunities to convince people of conspiracy theories, because groupthink and politeness may discourage outright criticism or thoughtful debate.
Holism
Holistic thinking avoids the categorization of ideas to the extent that it puts them in separate silos or implies Holistic thinking avoids the categorization of ideas to the extent that it puts them in separate silos or implies that they are exclusive, when they are not. In this way, permaculture is an interdisciplinary or holistic science. Holism encourages whole-system thinking and a focus on relationships, networks, and links over individuals and groups. In the past, it has been difficult to study networks holistically because relationships increase exponentially as the size of a system increases. However, with the rise of computing power and the innovation of machine learning, it is newly possible to study complex systems of greater sizes.
Holistic Management
This term refers to an approach to manage farm land, improve the soil, and prevent desertification. It differs from conventional farming in that animals’ manure, stomping, and thorough grazing are used to improve the soil microbiome. Movable fences are often used to rotate dense herds frequently. In this way, animals live a healthier life, soil bacteria counts improve, and animals’ work improves the local ecology.
One of the leading proponents of Holistic Management is Alan Savory, who describes Holistic Management as encompassing and improving the water cycle, mineral cycle, energy flow, and community. In this way, this management has much in common with permaculture, which seeks also to encompass multiple spheres of ecosystemic function.
Intentional Community
Intentional community is where a group of people decide to move to the same plot of land, combining their resources and energy to meet their needs, and moving towards mutual support. Intentional communities may also add new members once established, and have members exit when they wish to.
HYPERNYMOUS OF: Eco-village
RELATED TO: Monastic society (Intentional communities often share a spiritual commonalilty and purpose, but do not need to practice asceticism, nor do they need to make their common spirituality a focus of the daily life of community).
Keyline Design
Keyline design, a term popularized by Australian farmer PA Yeomans, involves designing landscapes for water flow, directing water where it is needed, and slowing the spread of water in order to use it efficiently, prevent erosion, and keep a store of it for dry periods. Keyline design is one of the major inspirations for Permaculture design, and most permaculture designs take keyline principles into account when deciding on which order to make changes to the land in, on a system called the Scale of Permanence.
Monoculture
Monoculture is an approach to farming often seen on conventional farms, in which a large area is devoted to a single crop. This type of faming is typically focused on annual plants, whose life cycles are shorter than a year. Planting and harvesting are easier and cheaper than with polyculture, but pest incursions are more likely, and the soil can end up degraded by continually taking the same nutrients from it each growing season. These two factors combine to make monoculture increasingly dependent on pesticides and fertilizers over time. This is one of the main complaints against conventional farming.
Montessori School, Waldorf School
Montessori and Waldorf schools are two similar approaches to alternative schooling. Both tend to be more holistic in their outlook than conventional schooling. Private schools may use their approaches easier than public schools, because of the small management teams and lack of state requirements for conventional testing in private schools. These schools have holistic curricula, and often include daily movement, secular spiritual well-being, and community-focused classrooms. In this way, the student is seen as being a human in an educational community, tribe, and in nature, more than they are an individual seeking attainment and achievement in test-based public schools. Because of the foci of these schools, they are generally more suited to smaller class sizes and require some natural areas to be present. Both of these factors, along with being independent of state governance, usually mean that Montessori and Waldorf schools are privately owned and operated. This has the unfortunate effect of having them only be open to wealthier families, or students on scholarships.
Organic
In the United States, ‘Organic’ is a US Department of Agriculture label for food that has met the requirements of the National Organic Program. The requirements of certification are complex and expensive to meet, meaning that small producers often cannot label their food as organic, even if it were to meet the requirements anyway. There are several levels of organic produce, but overall, the meaning of organic relates to the food production – how pesticides, fertilizers, genetically modified seeds, and composting have been used to produce the food. Some methods for farming are restricted and/or banned for organic producers, whose farms are held to a stricter standard than conventional food.
PDC
A Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) requires a 72-hour-long educational certification course in permaculture. This article discusses the PDC in detail, including its history and the topics taught in the course. Being awarded a certificate grants the holder a license to use the term ‘Permaculture’ in their design practice and educational materials. While the term ‘permaculture’ is not legally copyrighted, it is considered unethical to use the term if the person doesn’t hold the certificate described above. This article goes into more detail about Permaculture Design Certificate courses and their alternatives.
Permaculture
This term was invented in 1979 by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren to describe an overall holistic philosophy, design science, and management system for land use, agriculture, animals, economies, technologies, and societies to live in service to the Earth, ecosystems, and other people, while obtaining a tradeable surplus of production. In this way, ethics inform practice, in that if you love and have respect for the Earth and for life, you will live in accordance with that respect, while also working to meet your own needs and wants.
Polyculture
Polyculture is the opposite of monoculture, wherein multiple different types of crops are grown in shared land area. Polyculture systems are sometimes called ‘guilds’, wherein one main species, the keystone, is supported by several other crop types that complement its strengths and weaknesses. The keystone is often put in the center of the design. Polyculture systems often use perennial plants, or plants with a life cycle longer than one year. Food forests, herb gardens, intercropping, and silvopasture are examples of polyculture. These systems take longer to design, are more labor-intensive to plant, and take longer to harvest than monoculture systems, but they have the advantages of greater biodiversity, resistance to pestilence and disease, and improve soil health over time.
Regenerative
Regenerative means to improve soil health, increase biodiversity, and support the growth of healthy, resilient, productive ecosystems.
Renewable
Renewable means an energy source that is replenished faster than it can be used, and therefore has no known date where it is expected to run out or become dispersed and unusable. Examples include solar energy, hydro-electric energy, wind power, geothermal energy, tidal power, and fresh air.
Note that, because the energy source itself is renewable, does not guarantee that its method of production or storage, and therefore use, is sustainable or supportive of local ecology. For example, hydro-electric power is renewable, but many hydro-electric power stations destroy local ecology and may cause more harm than good. Hydrogen gas is theoretically renewable, but currently, 95% of hydrogen gas produced for fuel comes from natural gas, a source with a firmly defined limit to supply. The context of the production of the energy is as important as the original source.
Sector
In the context of permaculure, a sector is a range of angles, calculated from where the site being examined is, that types of energy flow in and out of the site. These angles can be visually mapped and help in the efficient placement of human-made objects. For example, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun will be south of you for the majority of the time, and therefore, shadows will point north. Incoming sunlight creates a profound energy differential, and is angular. Wind, water flow, and the movement of animals are other physical angular energies that also create energy differentials. Other, more abstract concepts can be used in sectors too – pleasant or ugly views, crime, noise, pollution, or pollen are all examples of ‘energies’ that can come from a predictable direction and therefore can be used efficiently and/or mitigated with good design.
Sociocracy
This is a method of decision-making in a group that seeks to move past autocracy, democracy, and voting, but promotes facilitated discussions and seeks an ideal of consent, where a group can act in unity, rather than from a large minority being against an idea but it going ahead anyway. Sociocracy is, therefore, not one method, but the use of multiple methods to reach a more harmonious state of agreement than majority voting alone can reach.
Sociocracy may make it more likely for a risky proposal to pass temporarily, with those opposed encouraged to stand aside for a defined period and then reconvene rather than to vote no, knowing that even a small amount of outright ‘no’ votes are understood by the community to be a clear reason to block a proposal. In this way, since dissent is taken much more seriously and is more like a veto vote than mere opposition, the principle of consent encourages people to be open to new ideas that are ‘good enough to try’.
Sociocracy may have its disadvantages too, where people are encouraged to go along with the group, but done well, it can help to avoid the problems of groupthink because it empowers individuals to hold true to what they believ in and be firm, and it helps to avoid the creation of smaller interest groups within the larger community, because building a following is less important than maintaining harmony with the group overall.
Sustainable
A sustainable project is one that can be continued indefinitely into the future. Large-scale capitalism and industrial society is often named as being unsustainable, which is a conclusion that’s hard to avoid when we consider the scale of environmental destruction left in the wake of the development of the human societies and nations that exist today. On a greater level of philosophy, nothing is perfectly sustainable or will last forever, but it is clearly possible to regenerate the environment and support biodiversity while continuing to thrive as a human society, so the authors of this site encourage sustainable choices, and the articles we write will be in service of this goal.
Sustainable Business
As suggested above, sustainability can be worked towards while a business continues to grow and support itself. On this web site, we will make a point of featuring web sites and producers that care about and work towards improving their sustainability.
Systems Thinking
Similar to the philosophy of holism, this science involves the study of relationships, networks, complex systems, and interdisciplinary thinking. In systems thinking, concepts like feedback loops, initial conditions, critical mass, ecological succession, tipping points, and entropy must be understood alongside the cause-and-effect model of basic science. While one does not need to be a systems engineer to promote sustainability, the concepts explained above are worth developing a familiarity over time with, as they are the guiding forces behind of many of the design principles of permaculture.
For example, “Catch and Store Energy – Make Hay while the Sun Shines” encourages using an abundant source while it is cheaply available, while the “Make Use of Edges and Value the Marginal” principle increases the number of relationships possible between organisms across an overlapping microbiome.
In many ways, the subject matter of Permaculture is built upon making systems thinking concepts relevant to applications that will improve local ecologies.
Unschooling
Unschooling is the partial or complete refusal of formal schooling, usually for a child that is otherwise expected to receive an education. While it is perfectly possible to receive an education through informal means and through family support, it takes a great deal of effort and organization to encourage learning complex and technical subjects.
This author works as a professional teacher, and suggests that while in the end, each family should do what is right for them, that the system of public schooling is intended to be helpful and good, and shouldn’t be dismissed, or thought of as a propaganda factory.
School can definitely feel oppressive, stressful, unfair, and may not cover some topics that are very important, relevant topics (personal finance, communication in relationships, diplomacy, spiritual wellbeing, and food preparation are some life skills that come to mind), but this does not mean by itself that schooling is fundamentally broken. Rather, it gives us a signpost for schools to evolve, and therefore do better for our communities. Intuitively, it should stand to reason that a society collectively educated in math, literature, culture, and science will empower individuals to make better choices than they would without those things, especially for the majority of people where family members don’t have the time or means to provide training in these skills.
Vegan, Vegetarian, Plant-Based
These three similar terms mean that a person’s diet is more restrictive. Dieting is an individual choice, and since it impacts a person’s health quite substantially, there are many ways to make good diet choices, but also, nutrition as a science is complex and information changes quickly, as there is a large amount unknown about how combinations of nutrients affect different human bodies in different ways.
It is also factual that widespread activities in the animal agriculture industry in the present day that are otherwise perfectly legal, also result in suffering of animals, destruction of ecosystems, overuse of water, and other happenings that indicate a general disrespect for life and disregard for the ethics in Permaculture and in animist nature religions.
With this controversial point presented, the definitions below are not meant to be taken as advice in any way, and there are many variants and levels of strictness to which people stick to these diets and identities around those diets. These terms are meant only for informational purposes.
With that said:
Vegan means to avoid all animal products in all consumer products, to whatever extent is possible. As a term, it seems to be associated with ethical views and identity as much as with diet.
Plant-based is similar, but seems to refer more to diet than to the identity of the person in question, and
Vegetarian means to avoid meat-based food products, but to allow products that don’t directly result in consuming dead animals, including eggs, cheese, honey, and wool.
Omnivorous means to consume a variety of foods with no specific restrictions
Workshop
This is a hybrid type of event, usually held in person, that combines theoretical education with practical experience. These tend to be short and informal. They are often held over timescales as short as 3 hours, and as long as 3 days. Workshops are discussed at greater length here.
WWOOF
WWOOF stands for Willing Workers On Organic Farms, which is a worldwide charity where participants sign up to stay and work, almost always for free in exchange for a home-stay experience and food. This allows people willing to learn organic farming to be allowed to do so for free and learn skills along the way. It is a good way to get into the world of organic farming. At the time of writing, there are 1,692 farm hosts registered on the main WWOOF USA web site.
Zero Waste
Zero waste is a policy of not producing physical waste, and a very high ideal to live up to. It is a goal for sustainable businesses not to produce waste, and while most businesses may not achieve zero waste literally, it is not impossible for them to be environmentally regenerative in other ways to make up for the waste they do produce.
Waste, here, is defined as a product that cannot be used by an ecosystem, and therefore, tends to generate toxicity in its environment rather than continue the life cycles present. Common causes of waste include plastic packaging, emissions from engines, pesticides, fertilizers, radioactive materials, and medical waste. Other less obvious forms of waste include heat exhaust, noise-making, and light pollution.
Waste production is heavily tied into the transportation industry, because the ability to transport waste around into a location where it can be processed is one of the only ways to mitigate it. Therefore, as transportation becomes greener, humanity will innovate new ways to work towards zero waste. In the mean time, we all have a collective responsibility to limit waste as best as we are able.
Zone
A zone, in the context of permaculture, is a land area that is defined by its proximity to one’s main living or work space, usually a home, office, or production area, and also to the amount of influence or control the person in question can have over the space. Zones are thus concentric around the living or working space, with Zone 0 referring to the work or home space itself, 1 to the area accessible within a minute’s walk, 2 to the area accessible within 2 minutes’ walk, 3 to open spaces usually used for fields or farming, 4 to open spaces often used for grazing or forestry or mining, and 5 to wilderness that is uncontrollable.
While zones have much overlap and these examples are not at all meant to be limiting, here is an imaginary typical land use pattern by zone:
0 – Home office
1 – Herb garden, chicken run, aquaponics setup
2 – Orchard, large nursery, market garden
3 – Fields, pastures, and small barns
4 – Forestry and foraging, or extensive pastures
5 – Camp-out by the river with no amenities nearby