CivicGreen provides core concepts of civic and community-based environmental protection, restoration, and resilience, as well as terms most relevant for civic, professional, and business partnerships for climate action.

Our short annotations give a brief definition.

Our full entries provide a more elaborate discussion of concepts, cases, toolkits, organizations, reports, scholarly references, with online links to many of these resources.

Our editorial team, senior editorial associates, and guest contributors help develop this glossary. As our own time, resources, and knowledge permit, we aim to utilize the shorter annotations as a launch pad for full entries, which we revise periodically in response to helpful suggestions, new resources, and critical feedback.

We do not try to cover all the terms that are relevant in such work, but you will find many more in the Bookshelf, City Desk, Toolbox, and other sections.

To be sure, there exists vigorous debate around many of these terms and practices. We provide some of the flavor of such debates in our references and view criticism as vital to enriching them further.

But we favor pragmatic civic action and policy design, and thus eschew ideological formulations.

To make suggestions, email our editor: carmensirianni511@gmail.com

Check out our full list of terms

Most Recent Glossary Entries

• Community Garden
  Definition: Community gardening provides shared spaces for residents of neighborhoods or members of institutions (schools, public housing) to grow food on allotted plots for their individual and family consumption, as well as for contributions to food banks. Gardens are generally […]
• Environmental Education
  Definition: Environmental education (EE) provides a foundation for building awareness and action about local and global environmental challenges and a sustainable future. While EE is a lifelong process, it often pays particular attention to children and youth. Its goal is […]
• Collaborative community conservation
  Definition: Collaborative community conservation is an approach that emphasizes the role of citizens and organized stakeholders in developing consensus-based, holistic responses to the complex ecological problems that cross regulatory and jurisdictional boundaries and seeks to engage partners in sustained deliberation, […]
• Healthy Cities and Communities
  Definition: In the healthy city framework, communities are respected for the local knowledge and assets they possess and are enabled to further refine and leverage these for greater impact in partnership with public health professionals, urban planners, transportation engineers, and […]