The Glossary Is Live, and It Is Yours to Strengthen
Working reference for climate, nature, NbS, and EbA terminology. Updated entries — 24 July 2026. A living reference, updated monthly — comments and suggestions welcome.
The NbS Praxis Glossary is now published, free to read, at nbspraxis.com/glossary
It began as a practical problem. Across the newsletter, the toolkits, and the advisory work, the same terms kept carrying different meanings depending on who used them, and at the climate-and-nature nexus those differences are not academic. Whether a measure is named "adaptation" or "conservation" decides which funds it can reach. Whether a claim is a contribution or an offset decides what a buyer may say about it. The vocabulary is the infrastructure, and it was worth setting down with care.
The Glossary holds 63 terms today, each in the same five-part structure: a crisp definition; examples of what the term is and what it is not; a rationale for why it matters in practice; references to the primary institutional sources, most now carrying a direct link to the document itself; and a set of related terms that turn the list into a network. It is written for the whole bench, the junior practitioner meeting a term for the first time and the senior one who wants the distinction stated precisely. We all started somewhere, usually with a mentor's help.
Two things about it matter as much as the content. First, it is alive. The Glossary is updated every month as new terms enter the practice, so it grows with the field rather than freezing at publication. Second, it is open. This is a reference by practitioners, for practitioners, and it is stronger for being argued with.
So this post is the place for that argument. If a definition reads wrong, if an example is off, if a term is missing, or if you would frame a rationale differently, say so in the comments below. Propose an edit, offer an example, or register a disagreement. The strongest of what comes back will shape the next monthly update, with credit where it is due.
Read the Glossary here: nbspraxis.com/glossary. Then tell us where it falls short, where to add references, projects, ... The Glossary will be updated in the last week of every month.
