Glossary.

Agroecology applies ecological principles to food and farming, including their social dimensions. The FAO’s ten elements emphasise diversity, cycles, shared knowledge and responsible governance, among other things. Sulitânia gained experience with food forests and soil care. The results need to be tracked in each place.

The regional development strategy for the Algarve towards 2030. Syntrociety investigates how its work on cooperation, nature restoration and learning can connect with regional challenges. The strategy, funding programmes and conditions for concrete projects must be read separately.

The Partnership Agreement between Portugal and the European Commission for the EU funding period 2021–2027. It provides a framework for European funds in Portugal. For a concrete application, the relevant programme, call and conditions are decisive. Syntrociety investigates how its work could connect with them.

A strip or network of habitat connecting other habitats and potentially supporting species movement. Planting can contribute to such connections. Whether this happens in a particular place requires research into the species present and the landscape; a food forest alone does not prove that function.

Cooperation between people and organisations bringing different knowledge, language and responsibilities. Syntrociety uses it to investigate how practice, research, enterprise and public decision-making can help one another. Shared questions, data and documents make conversation between these worlds possible.

Capturing and storing carbon, for example in plants and soil. Trees absorb CO₂ as they grow. Soil can also store carbon. How much a method captures and how long it remains stored depend on the place and management, and require measurement.

In biology, a cell is a basic unit of life. Syntrociety uses it as an image for a Lab that acts independently, carries shared foundations and helps shape the larger whole. The cell principle develops this organisational approach.

The federation's organising principle. A cell (a Lab, in federation terms) is autonomous (acting from its own legal and practical ground), fractal-part (sharing the structure of the larger whole without being subordinate to it), and co-formative (the larger whole emerges from the cells that form it, not the other way around). The three properties only function together. The principle distinguishes federation organisation from sociocracy (a method, not an organising principle), holacracy (a fractal pattern but with a pre-articulated, non-co-formable Constitution), and conventional federalism (often missing the co-formative dimension).

The federation's foundational document, signed by every member Lab. It contains five principles, Truth, Freedom, Responsibility, Openness, Consent, which together define what a Lab commits to in order to be part of the federation. The Charter is the legal minimum: it binds Labs without forcing them into sameness. It is what new Labs sign to join. It is what existing Labs re-sign if the Charter is amended. Part of the federation corpus.

The five principles are in the Charter; The Lens describes related patterns. See Truth to explore further.

An economic approach in which part of the income and resources becomes available again for shared care, infrastructure and the surroundings. Sulitânia described such an approach for cooperation between enterprises and the cooperative. The actual contribution and spending require agreements among those involved.

Resources that belong to a community and are looked after together: land, water, air, knowledge, culture. The idea has roots in shared grazing land. “Enclosure of the commons” means taking or destroying those shared resources. The Heal the System analysis argues that each phase of Portuguese history enclosed a different commons: colonial wealth, rural land, educated people, housing.

A decision is made when every paramount objection has been heard and integrated into the proposal. Distinct from unanimity (which requires agreement) and from consensus (which requires absence of dissent). Each objection improves the proposal; the wisdom of the group is built into the result.

A way of deciding in which every fundamental objection is heard and integrated into the proposal. This is how the Charter describes consent. The task is to clarify objections and develop a workable proposal together. Each Lab develops the specific method within the shared principles.

See Consent in The Lens for the syntropic principle behind this term.

The connected body of texts, agreements and knowledge Syntrociety is building. It includes the Charter, Practice, The Lens and SYFERS framework. The term helps us read these parts in relation to one another. Legal agreements, ideas and experiences each retain their own meaning and status.

The decision-making body of a Lab and of the federation. A circle of members who hold authority by mandate, work by consent, and record what they decide in the open registry. The federation Council includes one delegate from each member Lab; a Lab Council includes the Lab's own membership.

A working term for an institution that steps into one of the three non-civil-society roles of the quadruple helix configuration, research, policy, or industry, without becoming a Member. The Charter is reserved for Labs. The form of a counterpart relationship is not fixed in advance; the federation invites counterparts to find the form together, starting from what each side can offer.

A chain in which problems reinforce one another. Drought, fire risk, people leaving and declining services may be connected, for example. Heal the System explores such connections in Portugal. This is an analysis requiring evidence for each relationship, not a simple explanation through one cause.

Desenvolvimento Local de Base Comunitária, or community-led local development. Local action groups representing public and private interests develop and implement a strategy for their area. Syntrociety investigates whether this cooperation offers opportunities for Labs. Participation and funding depend on the chosen strategy and programme conditions.

Portugal’s National Smart Specialisation Strategy towards 2030, approved in June 2022. It guides research and innovation. Syntrociety uses it as context for exploring cooperation and possible connections with innovation policy. Such a connection does not establish the conditions for a concrete project.

Entropy is a concept from thermodynamics. Syntrociety also uses it as an image for wear and depletion: for example when land, water or people face repeated demands without enough restoration. In our texts, this comparison helps raise questions about care and carrying capacity. The physical meaning and its use as a design image each have their own context.

Syntrociety’s current stage: the shared principles and SYFERS framework are published, while the federation’s separate legal entity is in preparation. Sulitânia is the registered cooperative where this work began. The Status page describes the legal position and intended next steps.

See Federation in The Lens for the syntropic principle behind this term.

A chain in which an effect feeds back into its cause. This can amplify or slow a development. One example to investigate: people leaving can put services under pressure, making a place less attractive to others. Heal the System uses such loops to organise questions about Portugal.

Planting with edible species in different layers, such as trees, shrubs, herbs and ground cover. Many are perennial. Design and maintenance are adapted to the soil, water and desired harvest. Production and the effort required differ by place and development stage.

A pattern recurring at different scales. Syntrociety uses this as an image in the cell principle: shared principles can be recognisable in cooperation within a Lab and between Labs. The comparison helps investigate organisation; it does not itself prove how a community functions.

A person or organisation financially supporting the federation without being a Lab. The Ring describes the current invitation to contribute. The contribution, spending and any mutual agreements must be clear to those involved.

The European Union’s policy framework for the transition to a climate-neutral economy, aiming at climate neutrality in 2050. It includes policy on food, biodiversity and soil, among other areas. Syntrociety sees connections with its work on nature restoration and cooperation, and investigates how initiatives can contribute.

The federation's editorial publication: long-form diagnostic documents about the systemic conditions in specific territories. The first edition (Heal the System: Portugal) was published in 2025; a Dutch edition is in preparation. Each edition is written from the ground at a member Lab and signed by the federation. The series is a research contribution, not a manifesto. Part of the federation corpus.

The European Union’s research and innovation programme for 2021–2027. It funds research through different calls, each with its own themes and conditions. Cooperation around Living Labs can play a part. A Syntrociety initiative’s eligibility must be investigated for each call.

The tension between policy ambitions and the rules and procedures initiatives work within in practice. A policy framework supporting nature restoration or cooperation does not itself permit a concrete project. Syntrociety investigates with partners and public authorities which route is workable in each place.

A cooperative, supplier, or regenerative enterprise exploring with the federation what a regenerative supply or partnership relationship can look like. The form emerges from what the enterprise can contribute and what a Lab can absorb: materials, services, co-development of technology, or arrangements not yet tried. They are not Members; the Charter is reserved for Labs.

A cooperative that works across several areas of life at the same time. Sulitânia has eight sections: farming, production, services, housing and building, consumers, culture, education, and social solidarity. Many cooperatives focus on one activity. An integral cooperative weaves them together, on the idea that living together cannot be fixed one sector at a time.

An independent place where a community lives and works under the Charter, makes decisions by consent and records and shares its practice. A Lab is based on a registered cooperative or legal equivalent. The first Lab is Sulitânia in Portugal. The cooperative is winding down work at its previous site and seeking a new location.

The Lens is the conceptual framework behind many Syntrociety texts. Each concept has a principle, a counterpattern and a practice note. It helps raise questions about nature, cooperation, the economy and culture. Patterns uses a selection for reflection within SYFERS. This conceptual framework is distinct from the SYFERS Lens app, which organises and searches organisational documents.

A way to organise research and innovation in a real setting of use. The people and organisations involved develop, test and evaluate solutions together. The European Network of Living Labs describes this approach. Syntrociety builds on it with its own concept of the Syntropic Living Lab.

A system with characteristics of life, such as exchange with its surroundings, regulation and development. Syntrociety also uses living systems as an image for investigating how communities cooperate, share resources and maintain their capacity to sustain themselves. The comparison is a starting point for questions about practice.

A Dutch word for the unpaid, ongoing care that someone gives to a relative, neighbour, or friend who cannot fully care for themselves, illness, ageing, disability, fragility. Distinct from professional care: it is given out of relation, not contract, and tends to be invisible to economic accounting. The federation uses the word as a reminder that a Lab's economy must include the care work that holds its members upright; counted or not, the work is real, and a Lab that ignores it externalises its cost onto whoever quietly carries it.

A person who belongs to a Lab. Membership of a Lab is decided by that Lab, by consent, under the federation's Charter. A municipality, university, or enterprise does not become a Member of the federation; their formal status is counterpart. The civic supporter status is Friend.

Portuguese for small market. Sulitânia used the term for a small internal food market where people could share and exchange what they grew or made. This is an example from the previous site’s experience; how such a market might be organised in the next place still needs to take shape.

Short for Minga Cooperativa Integral de Montemor-o-Novo, a Portuguese integral cooperative that helped inspire Sulitânia’s structure. Minga showed that one cooperative could span agriculture, housing, culture, and education within Portuguese law.

In farming, monoculture means growing one crop. On this site, we also use it as an image for strong dependence on one activity or income source, such as tourism. This can make a place vulnerable when that activity changes. Diversification needs investigation in each situation.

Covering bare soil with organic matter: straw, wood chips, leaves, grass cuttings. Mulch shields soil from sun and heavy rain, keeps moisture, slows weeds, feeds soil life, and slowly turns into humus. In syntropic agroforestry, heavy mulching is often one of the first steps on worn land.

New European Bauhaus connects quality of experience, sustainability and inclusion. Syntrociety sees connections with caring for places where people live and work together. Specific participation and funding depend on the initiative and a programme’s conditions.

Generating, storing and using electricity outside the public grid. Sulitânia gained experience with shared solar power and storage at the previous site. Whether an installation can independently meet all demand depends on generation, storage, consumption and season; installed capacity alone does not demonstrate it.

The commitment to document a Lab’s work systematically and share knowledge so others can learn from it. What can be public, under which licence and with what evidence must be clear. Personal data and sensitive experiences need protection and careful agreements; openness does not make every record automatically public.

Open and Responsible Research and Innovation: research and innovation attentive to openness, social participation and responsibility. This includes transparent methods, careful data use, ethics and inclusion. SYFERS aims to support these principles. The applicable requirements and how they are met must be clear for each research project or programme.

A selection of concepts from The Lens for reflection within SYFERS. Selection and weights can be adapted to a question or analysis. These choices must remain visible so others understand the basis of the reflection. The Lens gives the broader explanation.

Three stages of ecological succession. Pioneers (many grasses, fast herbs, nitrogen-fixers) are first on bare or damaged ground: they grow quickly and prepare the soil. Secondary species (shrubs, smaller fruit trees) grow in the shelter pioneers create. Climax species (large canopy trees such as cork oak, carob, olive) are slow, long-lived, deep-rooted. In syntropic agroforestry, all three are planted from the start, and pruning helps move the system between stages.

A municipality, regional authority, ministry, or European directorate-general exploring with the federation how the Implementation Gap can be addressed in practice. Possible forms include Implementation Gap memoranda, consortium roles, formal recognition arrangements, and configurations the federation and the authority discover together. They are not Members; the Charter is reserved for Labs.

The federation's manifest of working disciplines: eight patterns observed in Labs when they are working well. Practice is not regulation; it is description. The eight disciplines describe how the Charter is lived day-to-day, and provide a shared vocabulary for federation members to recognise their own work in each other's. Practice is what makes the Charter operational. Part of the federation corpus.

In syntropic agroforestry, pruning directs light, space and plant growth. Prunings can remain on the soil as mulch. Appropriate management depends on the species, season and desired development. Effects on soil and yields must be tracked in practice.

A model for cooperation between community, research, enterprise and public authorities. Syntrociety uses it to explore how these parties can work together around a place. Internal activities differ from a formal partnership; concrete relationships and responsibilities need to be built and recorded.

The federation's quarterly retrospective. The Lab reads the records of the quarter back and answers four fixed questions: what broke, what held, what was learned, what is still open. The answers are written against what the records show, not from memory alone. The finished record is kept in chart, next to the decisions and events it reads back. The first step of the quarterly ritual; the second step is the mirror.

Regeneration focuses on restoring and strengthening living systems. In farming, this includes soil, biodiversity and water. The effects of a method depend on the place, management and time. Syntrociety also uses the term for care for people, relationships and a community’s capacity to sustain itself.

A Portuguese expression, literally "free ruler", that the federation uses for the operational margin a Lab keeps free from external accounting frameworks. Funders measure with their own ruler; municipalities with theirs; certifications with theirs again. A Lab that bends every measure of its work to those rulers loses the capacity to describe what is actually happening on the land. Régua livre is the Lab's own measure: the small set of indicators it keeps in its own language, for its own use, regardless of which external rulers are also being applied.

A university, research institute, or doctoral programme exploring with the federation what citable engagement looks like in practice. Possible forms include guest residencies, co-authored publications, consortium roles in Horizon Europe, case-study access to SYFERS, and forms not yet tried. The federation invites research counterparts to find the working shape together. They are not Members; the Charter is reserved for Labs.

How well a system can take a hit and keep working. In ecology, diversity and redundancy help: many species overlap in their roles, so if one fails, others can cover. That is different from efficiency, which trims overlap to maximise output. The Heal the System analysis suggests Portugal has been tuned for efficiency at the expense of resilience.

A collection of seeds stored and cared for for later use. Sulitânia explored seed work with Mediterranean species and traditional varieties under the name Baixo Guadiana Seed Guardians. Further development and participation opportunities depend on the next place and agreements.

The network of organisms in soil, such as bacteria, fungi and small animals. Their interactions play a part in breaking down organic matter and making nutrients available. People seeking to restore soil can investigate how this network responds to planting and management.

Organic material in soil from plants, animals and soil organisms. It can support soil structure, water retention and soil life. How this works in a place depends on the soil and management. Soil care includes preserving and building this material.

Short for Sulitânia Syntropic Agroforestry Lab. This was a research plot at the previous site, Quinta da Fornalha, exploring plant combinations and management. Sulitânia is winding down work there. The experience can provide a starting point for research at the next location.

Holding a place, a resource, or a body of work in trust for those who come after. Stewardship is older than ownership and broader than management: it implies care without claim, decisions made with future generations in the room, and accountability to the thing being held rather than only to its current users. The federation describes Lab work in stewardship terms, land, charter, practice, data, to mark that none of these belong to the present generation alone.

Change in an ecosystem over time, with species and conditions influencing one another. In syntropic agroforestry, planting and management support the desired development. Syntrociety also uses succession as an image for initiatives building on an existing place and its history.

Sulitânia is the integral cooperative at Quinta da Fornalha (Castro Marim, eastern Algarve): a multi-national membership regenerating organic farmland through food forests, shared energy, consent-based governance, and open experimentation. The name points to being in tune with place and each other; the same root as Syntonic, the events and media brand.

Shallow trenches dug along the contour of a slope so rainwater slows, spreads, and soaks in instead of running off and eroding soil. They are a common water-harvesting technique in agroforestry and permaculture to re-wet dry ground.

An open framework for communities and cooperatives to connect ecological restoration with shared living and a healthy economy, and to organise their work and learn from it. SYFERS is maintained within Syntrociety. Chart records practice; People supports ongoing contact; Ledger organises grant work; Compass supports reflection on cooperation; Lens makes organisational documents searchable. RRL helps land seekers and residents investigate a place in Portugal and develop a well-founded plan for living there, including people outside Labs. You choose the instrument that fits your question.

Syntrociety connects living together, restoration and learning. The name combines syntropy and society. From Sulitânia’s experience in southern Portugal, we are building a federation of independent Labs that care for their surroundings, share responsibility and exchange experiences. The federation’s separate legal entity is in preparation.

On this site, we use syntropic for an approach seeking greater connection, diversity and carrying capacity. It inspires questions about nature, cooperation and the economy. What a specific method achieves depends on the place and needs to be tracked in practice.

A way to grow food that follows how a natural forest develops. Many species grow together in layers from ground cover to tall trees, and the system is shaped with regular pruning. Over time it can become more productive, build soil, hold water, and host more life. The approach is strongly associated with Ernst Götsch’s work in Brazil.

A Syntropic Living Lab (SLL) is a working site at which a community of people lives, works, and learns on land or in a place under a discipline of increasing complexity over time, governs its decisions by consent, and registers its practice openly as the basis on which others can learn from it. It combines three traditions in a single operating unit: the European Union's Living Lab methodology, the syntropic principle of living systems, and cooperative governance organised as a quadruple helix. Coined by the Syntrociety federation; the full definition rests on six conditions, taken together. (Citable form, v 1.0 · April 2026.)

Syntrociety uses syntropy as a design concept for greater connection, diversity and carrying capacity. It inspires how we view nature, cooperation and the economy. Syntropic agroforestry applies a related approach to farming, with different species and vegetation layers. Practice must show what the approach achieves.

The federation's self-assessment in compass. A Lab places itself, for each of the sixteen SYFERS conditions, on one of four levels, and reads its trajectory against its own baseline. A mirror, not a gate: the reading is descriptive, no Lab is measured against another, and nothing opens or closes on the outcome. The second step of the quarterly ritual; the first step is reading back.

The approach through which Syntrociety investigates how regenerative initiatives can contribute to policy ambitions. The aim is to develop a workable route with public authorities and use experience to improve rules and procedures. The applicable conditions for a project must be established for each place.

A model for cooperation between universities, businesses and public authorities. The quadruple helix adds civil society as a fourth group. Syntrociety uses this four-part approach to investigate how people involved in a place can contribute alongside other partners.

The vegetation layer beneath the canopy of taller trees. Available light and shelter differ by place. Sulitânia used the new understorey as an image for work between the older orchards at Quinta da Fornalha, its previous site.