An ecovillage is a traditional or intentional community with the goal of becoming more socially, culturally, economically, and/or ecologically sustainable. An ecovillage strives to produce the least possible negative impact on the natural environment through intentional physical design and resident behavior choices. It is consciously designed through locally owned, participatory processes to regenerate and restore its social and natural environments. Most range from a population of 50 to 250 individuals, although some are smaller, and traditional ecovillages are often much larger. Larger ecovillages often exist as networks of smaller sub-communities. Some ecovillages have grown through like-minded individuals, families, or other small groups—who are not members, at least at the outset—settling on the ecovillage's periphery and participating de facto in the community.
A land lab is an area of land that has been set aside for use in biological studies. Thus, it is literally an outdoor laboratory based on an area of land.
Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking. It applies these principles in fields such as regenerative agriculture, town planning, rewilding, and community resilience. Permaculture originally came from "permanent agriculture", but was later adjusted to mean "permanent culture", incorporating social aspects. The term was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who formulated the concept in opposition to modern industrialized methods instead adopting a more traditional or "natural" approach to agriculture.
Forest gardening is a low-maintenance, sustainable, plant-based food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. Making use of companion planting, these can be intermixed to grow in a succession of layers to build a woodland habitat. Forest gardening is a prehistoric method of securing food in tropical areas. In the 1980s, Robert Hart coined the term "forest gardening" after adapting the principles and applying them to temperate climates.
Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EarthDay.org including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries. The official theme for 2022 is Invest In Our Planet.
David Holmgren is an Australian environmental designer, ecological educator and writer. He is best known as one of the co-originators of the permaculture concept with Bill Mollison.
Stelle is an unincorporated community located in Rogers Township in northern Ford County, Illinois, United States. Its estimated population as of 2013 is 100.
The California State University Northridge Botanic Garden or CSUN Botanic Garden is located in the northern San Fernando Valley, in the southeast section ("quadrant") of the California State University, Northridge campus in the community of Northridge in Los Angeles, California.
The Gardens by the Bay is a nature park spanning 101 hectares in the Central Region of Singapore, adjacent to the Marina Reservoir. The park consists of three waterfront gardens: Bay South Garden, Bay East Garden and Bay Central Garden. The largest of the gardens is the Bay South Garden at 54 hectares designed by Grant Associates. Its Flower Dome is the largest glass greenhouse in the world.
Can Masdeu is a squatted social centre, residence and community garden in the Collserola Park on the outskirts of Barcelona. The building, owned by Sant Pau hospital, was occupied by international activists in 2001 after being abandoned for roughly 53 years.
The Fes World Festival of Sacred Music is an annual music festival that is held for a week in Fes, Morocco. It was first held in 1994 and usually held over 10 days in early June.
The United States Social Forum is an ongoing series of gatherings of social justice activists in the United States which grew out of the World Social Forum process, bringing together activists, organizers, people of color, working people, poor people, and indigenous people from across the United States. Its purpose is to build unity around common goals of social justice, build ties between organizations at the event, and help build a broader social justice movement. Planning for the first event was spearheaded by the organization Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide, and involved dozens of other organizations around the United States. The Forum defines itself as "a movement-building process. It is not a conference but it is a space to come up with the peoples’ solutions to the economic and ecological crisis. The USSF is the next most important step in our struggle to build a powerful multi-racial, multi-sectoral, inter-generational, diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement that transforms this country and changes history."
Green infrastructure or blue-green infrastructure refers to a network that provides the “ingredients” for solving urban and climatic challenges by building with nature. The main components of this approach include stormwater management, climate adaptation, the reduction of heat stress, increasing biodiversity, food production, better air quality, sustainable energy production, clean water, and healthy soils, as well as more anthropocentric functions, such as increased quality of life through recreation and the provision of shade and shelter in and around towns and cities. Green infrastructure also serves to provide an ecological framework for social, economic, and environmental health of the surroundings. More recently scholars and activists have also called for green infrastructure that promotes social inclusion and equality rather than reinforcing pre-existing structures of unequal access to nature-based services.
The UBC Farm is a 24-hectare farm, and forest system, on the southern end of the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The farm is operated by the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, which is part of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, and has existed in its current form since 2000. It hosts a variety of crops and fruits, as well as some animals and composting facilities. Several academic programs allow the students to use the farm for research and teaching.
The Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN) is a youth organization in India that aims to raise the voice of Indian youth on the global platform, as South Asia is one of the most vulnerable regions affected by climate change and environmental issues. Further, IYCN is motivated by global need in the Indian context to adopt mitigation and adaptation policy measure to combat climate change.
Brad Stewart Lancaster is an expert in the field of rainwater harvesting and water management. He is also a permaculture teacher, designer, consultant and co-founder of Desert Harvesters, a non-profit organization.
Sustainable implant is an urban typology that acts as a decentralized infrastructure provision hub on the neighborhood or district scale. Sustainable implants provide integrated infrastructure services that maintain cycles of energy, water and material, as well as provides social and economic returns. The concept originates from Arjan van Timmeren’s research, Autonomy & Heteronomy (2006), as an answer to the problem of scale versus innovation in infrastructure; wherein infrastructure benefits from increasing returns to scale but suffer from extremely slow rate of change and turnover. To answer this problem, the sustainable implant is an instrument for mid-scale facilitation of alternative system innovation. The sustainable implant is a synthesis of techniques for sustainable processing of urban flows within an ecological processing device. The objective of a sustainable implant is to generate qualitative and quantitative improvements for utility service provision.
Car Free Day Vancouver is a community-based, volunteer-run event in Vancouver, British Columbia, which closes busy streets to car traffic and sets up day-long community festivals to promote active transportation, sustainability, and public spaces. It is similar to other Car-Free Days held around the world. It has traditionally taken place once per year on the third Sunday in June. In recent years it has expanded to events on both the Saturday and Sunday, in addition to an event in North Vancouver in August. The neighbourhoods involved often host smaller block parties in conjunction with a large street festival to celebrate. This day eliminates cars from the event sites along major streets and encourages people in these communities to interact with each other in the spirit of reducing carbon emissions. The larger street festivals include many non-profit organizations, artisans, artists, businesses, and food vendors. Some festivals also include live performances ranging from musical guests, to spoken word, to dance and more. The goals of these events are to remind people of their ecological impact on the city, to decrease dependence on personal vehicles as transportation within the city, to encourage active and alternative forms of transportation, and to help people see streets as public spaces for all.
A community orchard is a collection of fruit trees shared by communities and growing in publicly accessible areas such as public greenspaces, parks, schools, churchyards, allotments or, in the US, abandoned lots. Such orchards are a shared resource and not managed for personal or business profit. Income may be generated to sustain the orchard as a charity, community interest company, or other non-profit structure. What they have in common is that they are cared for by a community of people.
Paul Yeboah (1970-2021) was an educator, farmer, permaculturist, community developer, and social entrepreneur. He is the founder and coordinator of the Ghana Permaculture Institute and Network in Techiman, Ghana, West Africa. It is located in the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana. The purpose of the Institute is to build and maintain a stable food system, to take care of the local ecosystems, and to improve the quality of life in the rural areas. The GPN trains students and community in sustainable ecological farming techniques. They support projects throughout Ghana; women groups, micro-finance projects; teach growing moringa; mushroom production; alley cropping, food forests development and Agroforestry.
