Glossary definitions

A Chinese philosophy based on the writings of Lao-tzu, advocating humility and religious piety.

adj. Ten years.

The characteristics and needs of any particular policy or decision-making process.

Approaches and techniques based on science and other knowledge systems, including indigenous and local knowledge, that can inform, assist and enhance relevant decisions, policy-making and implementation at the local, national, regional and international levels.

Variation in subjective human judgments, preferences, beliefs, world views (Section 1.6.3).

The process of making decisions can happen at the individual level or amongst groups and entails the prioritisation of certain values. This prioritization greatly influences which issues are found worthy of consideration, do and do not become part of the agenda, as well as determine which decision-makers are considered socially legitimate to participate in the process.

System for logical interpretation of evidence leading to decision options that can be objectively evaluated.

Breakdown of complex organic substances into simpler molecules or ions by physical, chemical and/or biological processes.

Decorative and aesthetic uses are defined as the uses of wild species in order to produce handicrafts and objects of adornment, beauty, and/or entertainment.

Wind erosion.

Human-induced conversion of forested land to non-forested land. Deforestation can be permanent, when this change is definitive, or temporary when this change is part of a cycle that includes natural or assisted regeneration.

Land in a state that results from persistent decline or loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services that cannot fully recover unaided.

Land in a state that results from persistent decline or loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services that cannot fully recover unaided within decadal timescales.

Started as an activist movement around 2008 and turned into an academic discipline, it starts from the premise that economic growth cannot be sustained ad infinitum on a resource constraint planet. It demands a deep societal change, denying the need for economic growth. It is unclear whether degrowth should be considered as a collectively consented choice or an environmentally-imposed inevitability.

A theoretical frame invoking the necessity of downscaling and re- localizing production.

A model describing transition in demographic profile of a population, which has been associated with the development process that transforms an agricultural society into an industrial one and characterized by a rapid population growth due to a decline in the death rate while fertility remains high initially; the growth rate then declines due to a decline in the birth rate. Before the transition's onset, population growth is low as high death rates tend to offset high fertility. After the transition, population growth is again below replacement level as both birth and death rates reach low levels.

A heterotrophic process of anaerobic microbial respiration conducted by bacteria. Denitrification is the microbial oxidation of organic matter in which nitrate or nitrite is the terminal electron acceptor, and the end product is N2.

Reduction of nitrates and nitrites to nitrogen by microorganisms.

The increase in woody plants in a savanna, grassland or woodland.

Decreased oxygen concentrations in the ocean, as a result of climate change and other anthropogenic stressors, e.g. nutrient input due to inefficient fertilizer use.

The places where eroded soils are deposited.

refers to change that goes beyond addressing the symptoms of environmental change or their proximate drivers, such as new technologies, incentive systems or protected areas, to include changes to underlying drivers, including consumption preferences, beliefs, ideologies and social inequalities.

see exploratory scenarios.

Desertification means land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities. Desertification does not refer to the natural expansion of existing deserts.

Land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities.

Land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities. Desertification does not refer to the natural expansion of existing deserts.

Plausible future options either arising from or forming scenario assessments, often presented as narratives that explore or articulate possibilities for human economic development.

See driver.

Drivers (both natural and anthropogenic) that operate directly on nature (sometimes also called pressures).

Direct drivers are those natural and anthropogenic factors that affect biodiversity directly. Anthropogenic direct drivers can be conceptualized as the set of activities performed by humans that result in biodiversity loss (e.g. land clearance, intensific.

Natural direct drivers are those that are not the result of human activities and are beyond human control (e.g. natural climate and weather patterns, geological events). Anthropogenic direct drivers result from human decisions.

One DALY can be thought of as one lost year of healthy life. The sum of these DALYs across the population, or the burden of disease, can be thought of as a measurement of the gap between current health status and an ideal health situation where the entire population lives to an advanced age, free of disease and disability.

The concept and practice of reducing disaster risks through systematic efforts to analyze and manage the causal factors of disasters, including through reduced exposure to hazards, lessened vulnerability of people and property, wise management of land and the environment, and improved preparedness for adverse events.

Movement of individuals (and in some species, their gametes) that has the potential for moving genes through space.

Allocation of costs, benefits, risks and responsibilities as well as of the products of nature requiring the disaggregation of values to highlight who benefits and who loses, and to demonstrate the consequences for those affected.

Focuses on the allocation among stakeholders of costs and benefits, include intergenerational and intragenerational justice.

Diverse values arise from the different lenses through which people interpret human-nature relationships (i.e. worldviews), and as a result, diverse values have had different meanings across disciplines, knowledge systems, cultures, languages and social-ecological contexts. This assessment focuses on the diverse values of nature which emerge from the different ways in which people perceive nature and build their relations with it.

Any system that uses a mix of crops, trees, livestock and fish to ensure variety of food, fodder and fibre sources and complementary use of natural resources. The diversity of crops and animals helps to achieve stability of production and stability of ecosystem processes.

Emphasizes use of a suite of farming practices that promote agro-biodiversity across scales (from within the farm to the surrounding landscape), leading to the generation and regeneration of key ecosystem services (soil fertility, water use efficiency, pest and disease control, pollination, climate resilience, and others) and reducing the need for off-farm inputs.

The condition of having or comprising differing elements or qualities (peoples, organisms, methodologies, organisations, viewpoints, etc.).

a commonly used molecular method (e.g., for detection of species, revealing species interactions and assessment of diversity of community assemblages) that involves the amplification of a short section of DNA from a specific gene or genes. Recent advances have extended the application of this approach from the identification of individual specimens to identification of multiple specimens within mixed samples through DNA metabarcoding

A specified sphere of activity or knowledge.

Species in which the evolutionary process has been influenced by humans to meet their needs.

Evolutionary process driven by human (whether conscious or unconscious) selection but also involving natural processes applied to wild plants or animals and leading to adaptation to cultivation and consumption or utilization. Domestication can be complete, whereby organisms become entirely dependent on humans for their continued existence or can be partial or incipient, whereby they still reproduce independently of human intervention (Gepts, 2014). In traditional systems, farmer practices still shape the genetic structure of crops and their evolution (Vigouroux et al., 2011).

Refer to measures taken to give global agreement the power and the force of national legal systems and regulations to enable and facilitate their applicability in the national context while ensuring full compliance with international commitments.

Evolutionary process driven by human (whether conscious or unconscious) selection but also involving natural processes applied to wild plants or animals and leading to adaptation to cultivation and consumption or utilization. Domestication can be complete, whereby organisms become entirely dependent on humans for their continued existence or can be partial or incipient, whereby they still reproduce independently of human intervention (Gepts, 2014). In traditional systems, farmer practices still shape the genetic structure of crops and their evolution.

Erroneously including the same ecosystem service more than once in an economic analysis.

The transformation of information from coarser to finer spatial scales through statistical modelling or spatially nested linkage of structural models.

In the context of IPBES, drivers of change are all the factors that, directly or indirectly, cause changes in nature, anthropogenic assets, nature's contributions to people and a good quality of life.

In the context of IPBES, drivers of change are all the factors that, directly or indirectly, cause changes in nature, anthropogenic assets, nature's contributions to people and a good quality of life. Direct drivers of change can be both natural and anthropogenic. Direct drivers have direct physical (mechanical, chemical, noise, light etc.) and behaviour-affecting impacts on nature. They include, inter-alia, climate change, pollution, different types of land use change, invasive alien species and zoonoses, and exploitation. Indirect drivers are drivers that operate diffusely by altering and influencing direct drivers as well as other indirect drivers. They do not impact nature directly. Rather, they do it by affecting the level, direction or rate of direct drivers. Interactions between indirect and direct drivers create different chains of relationship, attribution, and impacts, which may vary according to type, intensity, duration, and distance. These relationships can also lead to different types of spill- over effects. Global indirect drivers include economic, demographic, governance, technological and cultural ones, among others. Special attention is given, among indirect drivers, to the role of institutions (both formal and informal) and impacts of the patterns of production, supply and consumption on nature, nature's contributions to people and good quality of life.