Glossary definitions

Community-based natural resource management: an approach to natural resource management that involves the full participation of indigenous peoples' and local communities and resource users in decision-making activities, and the incorporation of local institutions, customary practices, and knowledge systems in management, regulatory, and enforcement processes. Under this approach, community-based monitoring and information systems are initiatives by indigenous peoples and local community organisations to monitor their community's well-being and the state of their territories and natural resources, applying a mix of traditional knowledge and innovative tools and approaches.

Community-based natural resource management: an approach to natural resource management that involves the full participation of indigenous peoples? and local communities and resource users in decision-making activities, and the incorporation of local inst.

Community-based tourism is defined as an approach to tourism development which prioritizes the needs and desires of the host community.

Decentralized system of forest resource management designed to promote more equitable outcomes for stakeholders’ livelihoods changing relationships between stakeholders and government agencies.

A given project attains zero net biodiversity loss when its unavoidable impacts on biodiversity are balanced out or compensated by actions such as conservation, rehabilitation, restoration and/or compensation of residual impacts that avoid or minimize losses. In this case, compensation refers to environmental compensation and not socioeconomic compensation to the people who are affected by the project’s impact.

The second stage of cognitive process. Perceptions are selected, organized, classified and hierarchized into concepts. This process is influenced by collective filters which are human systems of values, norms, and beliefs. Concepts do not come alone, but as integrated networks. See also ‘Reality’; Perceptions; Worldviews”.

The Platform's conceptual framework is a tool for building shared understanding across disciplines, knowledge systems and stakeholders of the interplay between biodiversity and ecosystem drivers, and of the role they play in building a good quality of life.

See certainty.

Conflict is defined as when levels of armed violence due to political insecurity, instability, or civil or international war are substantially higher than in non-conflict times. This leads to a disruption of economies, government services and the extensive movement of people to flee conflict zones for personal safety and/or better opportunities.

Refers to a situation where opposing attitudes, beliefs, identities, interests, norms or values coexist. This can lead to an active disagreement between people. Conflicts are likely to arise when individuals or groups in a given decision-making process feel their values are being ignored; or when they cannot agree on the underlying value rationality, or the way in which values will be integrated, traded-off or reconciled to inform a given decision. When different values collide in a decision-making situation, the conflict can be described as a value conflict.

The proportion of possible links between species that actually occur (or have been observed to occur).

Approach to managing agro-ecosystems for improved and sustained productivity, increased profits and food security while preserving and enhancing the resource base and the environment. It is characterized by three linked principles, namely: (i) continuous minimum mechanical soil disturbance; (ii) permanent organic soil cover; and (iii) diversification of crop species grown in sequences and/or associations. This covers a wide range of approaches from minimum till to permaculture/mimicking nature.

Approach to managing agro-ecosystems for improved and sustained productivity, increased profits and food security while preserving and enhancing the resource base and the environment. It is characterized by three linked principles, namely: 1) continuous minimum mechanical soil disturbance; 2) permanent organic soil cover; and 3) diversification of crop species grown in sequences and/or associations. This covers a wide range of approaches from minimum till to permaculture/mimicking nature.

The positive impacts on people and ecosystems due to conservation.

The branch of biological science concerned with the conservation, management, and protection of vulnerable species, populations, and ecosystems. Also see 'Biological conservation'.

Voluntary, typically permanent, partial interest in property created through agreement between a landowner and a nonprofit land trust or government agency in which a landowner agrees to land-use restrictions, usually in exchange for a payment, tax reduction, or permit.

A financial mechanism to deliver funding to community groups and individuals for conservation works and, sometimes, permanently protect biodiversity (Australian Government, Department of the Environment and Energy).

The difference between the total amount that consumers are willing and able to pay for a good or service (indicated by the demand curve) and the total amount that they actually do pay (i.e. the market price), or the difference between the consumers' willingness to pay for a commodity and the actual price (equilibrium price) they pay.

Substance or agent present in the soil as a result of human.

The gently sloping, shelf-like part of the seabed adjacent to the coast extending to a depth of about 200m.

The often steep, slope-like part of the seabed extending from the edge of the continental shelf to a depth of about 2,000m.

The contingent valuation method is used to estimate economic values for all kinds of ecosystem and environmental services. It can be used to estimate both use and non-use values.

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is an international agreement between governments. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.

Farming methods that rely on high inputs of machinery, fossil fuels and synthetic chemicals, including fertilizers and pesticides. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) may also be used. Despite the term conventional, such agricultural methods have evolved only since the industrial revolution (19th century) and became widespread after the mid-20th century. It is also referred to sometimes as industrial agriculture”.

They refer to practical rules about how to undertake certain actions. They simplify interaction and facilitate coordination. Examples are the language, measurement scales (e.g. money, weight., length) and directions in the sky. Management systems, professional codes and dressing codes are other forms.

When water is too warm, corals will expel the algae (zooxanthellae) living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white. Corals can survive a bleaching event, but they are under more stress and are subject to mortality.

Geographical term for a roughly triangular area of tropical ocean that includes the coastal waters of Malaysia, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands and is recognised as the global centre of coral reef and marine biodiversity and a global conservation priority.

A model in which available empirical data are used to estimate values for parameters that do not have predefined ecological meaning, and for which processes are implicit rather than explicit.

See models.

A geographically defined area which allows species to move between landscapes, ecosystems and habitats, natural or modified, and ensures the maintenance of biodiversity and ecological and evolutionary processes.

A geographically defined area which allows species to move between landscapes, ecosystems and habitats, natural or modified, and is intended to ensure the maintenance of biodiversity and ecological and evolutionary processes.

see cosmocentric.

A vision of reality that places the highest importance or emphasis in the universe or nature, as opposite to an anthropocentric vision, which strongly focuses on humankind as the most important element of existence.

The ways any society develops worldviews that aim at explaining the content and the dynamics of the universe, its spatial and temporal properties, the types of living beings that inhabits it, the principles and energies that explains its origin and its future.

A procedure for estimating all costs involved and possible profits (benefits) to be derived from a business or development opportunity or proposal.

A technique designed to determine the feasibility of a project or plan by quantifying its costs and benefits.

Country possessing genetic resources in in-situ conditions (CBD, 1992).

Country supplying genetic resources collected from in-situ sources, including populations of both wild and domesticated species, or taken from ex-situ sources, which may or may not have originated in that country (CBD, 1992).

Social-ecological systems are complex, integrated systems in which humans are part of nature.

Increasing yields, area of extent and/or environmental impacts of agricultural production.

See ‘Wild relative’.

A land cover/use category that includes areas used for the production of crops for harvest.

The pattern of crops produced on a given piece of land, or sequence in which the crops are cultivated on pieces of land over a fixed period, and their interaction with farm resources and other farm enterprises.

The movement of pollen between the flowers of two distinct plants.

Cross-scale effects are the result of spatial and/or temporal processes interacting with other processes at another scale. These interactions create emergent effects that can be difficult to predict.

Relating to interactions between sectors (that is, the distinct parts of society, or of a nation's economy), such as how one sector affects another sector, or how a factor affects two or more sectors.

Relating to, or affecting, more than one sector (distinct part of society, or of a nation's economy).

It has been hypothesized that the rise of economic incentive approaches (so-called ‘market-based’ approaches) in environmental policy making, could lead to a change in values towards a commercialization of nature (i.e. people putting more weight on instrumental values and less on intrinsic values of nature in decision-making). This risks undermining intrinsic motivation or pro-nature values and mindsets.

The components of the Earth system that contain a substantial fraction of water in a frozen state, i.e. sea ice, glaciers, ice sheets.

The cryosphere is those portions of Earth's surface where water is in solid form, including sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, and frozen ground (which includes permafrost).