Definitions for the terms Rooting for Earth uses, both its own and the ones it draws on.
What Rooting for Earth calls itself, rather than a think tank. Where a traditional think tank uses human intellect alone to analyse problems, a sensing tank also draws on sensing, embodied and relational ways of knowing, ecological intelligence, traditional and Indigenous ecological knowledge, and futures thinking, in dialogue with the more-than-human world.
The philosophy at the root of Rooting for Earth: an ecocentric worldview, a practice of embodied listening, and an ongoing question of what it means to belong to a living Earth again.
See: Soil to Soul
Rooting for Earth's term for a form of power that is not domination over others, but the capacity to stand firmly in one's own truth while remaining woven into the needs of the whole: the recognition that individual thriving and the vitality of the wider living world are inseparable.
Rooting for Earth's term for the interconnected fabric of relationships between humans and the more-than-human world: a way of naming the world as a network of subjects in continuous dialogue, rather than a collection of separate objects.
In Rooting for Earth's usage, a way of being rather than an ethnic or cultural identity: the humility to recognise that we belong to a living place, and to let that relationship shape how we live and create. It does not describe or claim Indigenous identity, traditions or knowledge, which belong to the peoples who hold them.
Rooting for Earth's term for the idea that every life form carries an inherent right to flourish, independent of its usefulness to humans: a right that was never humanity's to grant, only to recognise.
Rooting for Earth's term for treating the body itself, its intuition, nervous system and sensory attention, as a channel for listening to the living world, alongside scientific, ecological and cultural ways of knowing.
Rooting for Earth draws on existing philosophy, law and Indigenous scholarship rather than claiming these ideas as its own. The definitions below are offered as background, not as R4E's original thinking.
A philosophical position developed by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss, arguing that all living beings have intrinsic value independent of their usefulness to humans, and that ecological problems call for a fundamental shift in how humans see their relationship to the rest of life, not only technical fixes.
A concept introduced by the conservationist Aldo Leopold, proposing that humans understand themselves as members of, rather than conquerors of, a wider biotic community that includes soils, waters, plants and animals.
A legal and political movement that seeks to recognise ecosystems, rivers or nature as a whole as holders of legal rights, such as the right to exist, persist and regenerate, rather than treating them only as property. Ecuador and Bolivia are among the countries that have given some form of legal recognition to these ideas.
An emerging field of legal philosophy exploring what law and governance might look like if grounded in the understanding that humans are one part of an Earth community, rather than separate from and superior to it.
Intrinsic value is worth that something holds simply by existing, independent of its use to anyone else. Instrumental value is worth measured by usefulness: what something provides or produces for someone else. The distinction sits at the heart of whether the living world is understood to matter in itself, or only for what it offers humans.
An area of thought that asks whose interests are considered, and whose are left out, when human societies make decisions that affect other forms of life, extending the questions of justice beyond the human.
A term used across ecological philosophy for the community of life beyond humans, animals, plants, fungi, rivers, soils and ecosystems, without treating that world as a backdrop to human affairs, or passively as “the environment”.
See: Soil to Soul
The accumulated knowledge, practices and beliefs that Indigenous and traditional cultures have developed over generations about their relationships with the living systems around them. Rooting for Earth approaches TEK with respect, and treats it as belonging to the peoples who hold it, not as material to extract or reproduce.
