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This glossary supports the development of this new shared vocabulary. Over time, we add to it, revise definitions and examples, while we test our notions in practice and discover how our work can benefit human and other-than-human life. So the glossary is a work-in-progress that is expanding and improving in constant collaboration. As of spring 2022, Nieuwe Instituut is a Zoöperation, an organization in which the interests of nonhuman life are part of organisational decision making. With the introduction of the New Store, an alternative concept for “regenerative retail,” the institute is exploring, through a series of successive branches – starting with a pop-up store in Eindhoven in the fall of 2023 and a subsequent one in Milan in April 2024 – how to realize stores that contribute to the wellbeing of the planet.

Regeneration is an ongoing repair, renewal or rebuilding process. It implies that a system or entity recovers, renews or rebuilds itself after damage, loss or some other form of deterioration. It can be a biological process in an individual animal, for instance, a broken leg of a stick insect that gives way to a new one, a wound in your human skin that heals, or a lobster’s scissors that regrow fully when it loses them. The word can also refer to how a clearing in a forest grows back with successive generations of different plants and trees, or how a pond comes back to life after winter.

In ecosystems, regeneration occurs when balance and reciprocity return to the system when they have been disrupted. Technologically, regeneration would mean that materials or systems renew themselves when they are degraded.

For zoöperations [see Zoöp*] and for the New Store, regeneration is always about both ecological and social aspects of ongoing repair and renewal. For social regeneration, one can think of the development of equal living and working conditions, the creation and maintenance of communities, and a shared commitment to social justice.

The adjectival, descriptive derivative of the phenomenon or process of regeneration*. When we call a process or system “regenerative,” in short, it means that it contributes to the restoration, renewal or ongoing reconstruction of (human-inclusive) ecosystems and appropriate living conditions. Examples:

• Regenerative agriculture is a form of agriculture that not only provides people with food, but also provides for other-than-human life. Such agriculture improves soil quality and provides other life forms with opportunities for habitat, feeding and forming relationships.
• A regenerative building chain is a way of realising buildings in which all stages in the process, from the design of the building to the production of building materials and the construction itself, are undertaken in such a way as to enhance the life-supporting capacity of the planet. A regenerative building chain uses regenerative materials in a nature-inclusive design, realized with consideration for the life cycles of local ecosystems.
• Regenerative design is a design process that for all aspects of the design of a product service* (material use, required transportation, production, sale, use and end-of-life) ensures that realisation contributes to opportunities for habitat, food and reciprocal relationships for all stakeholders.
• A regenerative economy is an economy that provides for the needs of all life, not just some people. Thus, this is the same as a human-inclusive ecosystem. Economy is the combined production, exchange and consumption of goods and services. The word also indicates the science that studies this. According to the Dutch dictionary Dikke van Dale, the definition is “the study of ‘the human [sic] pursuit of prosperity,’ The field of regenerative* economics, then, is the study of the common pursuit of prosperity (and well-being) of all life."

These are different terms for the same concept. These different terms are necessary to make the concept recognizable in different contexts. Regenerative economics as a term connects to the living world of economists. Human-inclusive ecosystem is more recognisable for ecologists. Zoönomy is the term used by Zoöps*, who want to think and work beyond the separation between nature and culture (or ecology and economics). Zoönomy means something like the (household) rules for all life. As long as humans talk of an ecology alongside an economy, they think from a separation of the world of humans and that of other-than-human life, which is one of the root problems of the current ecological degradation.

In a regenerative economy*, a product is never only a material object. A product service is a human artifact of which a set of services, experiences and relationships are inseparable parts, and that are co-designed in the realization of the product service. It may include, for example, a local repair service, or the ability for users to provide feedback on the design, or, for example, the support by the creators of a user group in which knowledge about possible applications is shared. In a regenerative economy*, product services maintain and large number of regenerative relationships with the social-ecological networks in which they operate.

Value webs are networks of human and other-than-human participants in the creation and maintenance of product services*. All participants in value webs provide and derive value from their participation. Value webs are an effect of applying the patterns of ecological modes of exchange to what we are used to seeing as economic forms of exchange. In value webs, multiple types (chemical, aesthetic, social, financial, etc.) of value carriers (currencies) are always exchanged simultaneously, without being reducible to a single standard unit of value.

Zoöp is short for Zoöperation (cooperative with zoë, the Greek word for 'life'). Zoöp is an organisational model in which the interests of other-than-human life are actively represented and included in decision-making. A Zoöp is aimed at a transformative learning process with which the organisation (that has introduced the Zoöp model) learns to contribute to social-ecological regeneration. Nieuwe Instituut is the first Zoöp in the world, since April 2022. Three more Zoöps were founded in November 2023.

This definition is contributed by Giulia Cantaluppi and Isabella Inti of Temporiuso.

Model based on the revitalisation of the local economic fabric through neighborhood relations and social and environmental relationships, which also revolve around small businesses and local products. In Milan, the proximity economy is also a collaborative economy when it also includes hybrid socio-cultural spaces, managed by associations and cultural entrepreneurs that provide self-organised services to the neighbourhoods, subsidiary but not substitutes for municipal services.

This glossary is a work in progress that, as the New Store project advances, is continually updated, improved and expanded. Latest update: 5-6-2024.