About

golden growth symbol

The word “Oikos” is Greek for “home”or “household”, and it is the root of both economy (oikos-onomia) and ecology (oikos-logia). A network is a system for transferring information and nutrients to the various elements involved, and this is generally what the Ohikos Network seeks to accomplish.

Ohikos functions as a facilitator for ecological designs and permaculture projects; connecting people with information and resources for sustainable living and the building of healthy and resilient local culture.

Our work is largely guided by the principles and philosophy of Permaculture, which is a blend of the words “permanent” and “culture”/”agriculture”. It is a systems design methodology for creating sustainable human habitats that mimic the complexity found in natural ecosystems, and is built on the ethics of caring for people, caring for the earth, and returning the surplus.  At the core of Permaculture is the idea that we ought to work with nature, rather than against nature, thus benefiting the environment and the people within it. We ought to look to nature’s design and processes when imposing our own intentions on the world, and from a Permaculture design perspective, this means catching and storing wild energy, favouring biological resources and self-governing systems, eliminating waste (unused resources), designing with redundancy and multi-functional elements, and maximizing outputs while minimizing inputs. This approach to design seeks to create resilient and perennial life-supporting ecosystems that overflow with abundance and security and require little human involvement.