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Glossary definitions

The IPBES glossary terms definitions page provides definitions of terms used in IPBES assessments. Some definitions in this online glossary have been edited for consistency. Please refer to the specific assessment glossary for citations/authorities of definitions. 

We invite you to report any errors or omissions to [email protected].

Concept Definition Deliverable(s)
exploitation

The consumptive use of any natural resources.

Sustainable use assessment
exploratory scenario

See scenario.

exploratory scenario

Scenarios that examine a range of plausible futures, based on potential trajectories of drivers - either indirect (e.g. socio-political, economic and technological factors) or direct (e.g. habitat conversion, climate change).

Scenarios and models assessment
exploratory scenario

Scenarios that examine a range of plausible futures, based on potential trajectories of drivers - either indirect (e.g. socio-political, economic and technological factors) or direct (e.g. habitat conversion, climate change).

Sustainable use assessment
exposure

The state of having no protection from something potential harmful.

Asia-Pacific assessment
extensive forest management

Low or no input in regeneration or site amelioration is practiced in sparsely populated regions with large forest areas, such as boreal forests (Taiga) of Canada and Siberia, and across much of the world´s major tropical forest biomes.

extensive grazing

Extensive grazing is that in which livestock are raised on food that comes mainly from natural grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts. It differs from intensive grazing, where the animal feed comes mainly from artificial, seeded pastures.

Asia-Pacific assessment, Americas assessment
extensive grazing (lands)

A form of grazing in which livestock are raised on food that comes mainly from natural grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands and deserts. It differs from intensive grazing, where the animal feed comes mainly from artificial, seeded pastures.

Land degradation and restoration assessment
extent (spatial or temporal)

see spatial scale and temporal scale”.

Scenarios and models assessment
externality

A positive or negative consequence (benefits or costs) of an action that affects someone other than the agent undertaking that action and for which the agent is neither compensated nor penalized through the markets.

Land degradation and restoration assessment, Europe and Central Asia assessment, Global assessment (1st work programme), Asia-Pacific assessment, Sustainable use assessment, Americas assessment
externality

an economic concept of uncompensated environmental effects of production and consumption that affect consumer utility and enterprise cost outside the market mechanism

Invasive alien species assessment
extinction

A population, species or more inclusive taxonomic group has gone extinct when all its individuals have died. A species may go extinct locally (population extinction), regionally ( extinction of all populations in a country, continent or ocean) or globally. Populations or species reduced to such low numbers that they are no longer of economic or functional importance may be said to have gone economically or functionally extinct, respectively. Species extinctions are typically not documented immediately: for example, the IUCN Red List categories and criteria require there to be no reasonable doubt that all individuals have died, before a species is formally listed as Extinct (see IUCN Red List).

Sustainable use assessment
extinction debt

The future extinction of species due to events in the past, owing to a time lag between an effect such as habitat destruction or climate change, and the subsequent disappearance of species.

Global assessment (1st work programme), Global assessment (1st work programme), Europe and Central Asia assessment, Asia-Pacific assessment, Land degradation and restoration assessment, Pollination assessment
extinction

A population, species or more inclusive taxonomic group has gone extinct when all its individuals have died. A species may go extinct locally (population extinction), regionally (e.g. extinction of all populations in a country, continent or ocean) or glo.

extinction

The evolutionary termination of a species caused by the failure to reproduce and the death of all remaining members of the species; the natural failure to adapt to environmental change.

Americas assessment
extractive practice

Extractive practices are defined as the temporary or permanent removal of organisms, part of them or materials derived from them, and may result in mortality of the individual to be used (hunting or whole plant harvest), but does not necessarily do so (e.g. limited collection of plant propagules or shearing and releasing of vicuna).

Sustainable use assessment
extractives

Hydrocarbons (oil and gas) and minerals.

Americas assessment
taboo

A social or religious custom prohibiting or restricting a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or behavior.

Sustainable use assessment, Global assessment (1st work programme)
target

A choice by people of a desired contemporary or future outcome.

Land degradation and restoration assessment
target condition

A condition that maximizes the desired mix of ecosystem services.

Land degradation and restoration assessment
target-seeking scenario

Scenarios that start with the definition of a clear objective, or a set of objectives, specified either in terms of achievable targets, or as an objective function to be optimized, and then identify different pathways to achieving this outcome (e.g. through backcasting).

Scenarios and models assessment
target-seeking scenario

See “scenarios”.

Americas assessment, Sustainable use assessment
taxon

A category applied to a group in a formal system of nomenclature, e.g. species, genus, family etc. (plural: taxa).

Global assessment (1st work programme), Sustainable use assessment, Americas assessment, Asia-Pacific assessment, Europe and Central Asia assessment
taxonomic diversity

Variety of species or other taxonomic categories (IUCN, 2012a).

Global assessment (1st work programme)
technical paper

Technical papers are based on the material contained in the assessment reports and are prepared on topics deemed important by the Plenary.

technical summary

A Technical Summary is a longer detailed and specialized version of the material contained in the summary for policymakers.

telecoupling

Tele-coupling refers to socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances. It involves distant exchanges of information, energy and matter (e.g. people, goods, products, capital) at multiple spatial, temporal and organizational scales.

Africa assessment
tele-grabbing

Transboundary acquisition of land.

Global assessment (1st work programme)
teleconnection

Relates to the environmental interactions between climatic systems over considerable distances.

Americas assessment
teleconnection

A statistical association between climate variables at widely separated, geographically-fixed spatial locations. Teleconnections are caused by large spatial structures such as basin-wide coupled modes of ocean-atmosphere variability, Rossby wave-trains, mid-latitude jets and storm tracks, etc.

IPBES-IPCC co-sponsored workshop on biodiversity and climate change
telecoupling

Socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances. It involves distant exchanges of information, energy and matter (e.g. people, goods, products, capital) at multiple spatial, temporal and organizational scales.

Land degradation and restoration assessment
telecoupling

Refers to socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances. It involves distant exchanges of information, energy and matter (e.g. people, goods, products, capital) at multiple spatial, temporal and organizational scales.

Europe and Central Asia assessment, Americas assessment
telecoupling

Telecoupling refers to socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances. It involves distant exchanges of information, energy and matter (e.g. people, goods, products, capital) at multiple spatial, temporal and organizational scales.

Global assessment (1st work programme), Global assessment (1st work programme)
telecoupling

Telecoupling refers to the phenomenon that natural or anthropogenic processes in one part of the globe have an effect on a distant part of the world (Friis et al., 2016). This concept thus enables the description of flows and impacts between globally distant places in a common language. Synonym in the literature is global inter-regional connectedness.

IPBES-IPCC co-sponsored workshop on biodiversity and climate change
temporal scale

Comprised of two properties: 1) temporal extent - the total length of the time period of interest for a particular study (e.g. 10 years, 50 years, or 100 years); and 2) temporal grain (or resolution) - the temporal frequency with which data are observed or projected within this total period (e.g. at 1-year, 5-year or 10-year intervals).

Pollination assessment, Global assessment (1st work programme), Scenarios and models assessment
temporal scales

Measurements or other observations reported along a time series.

Asia-Pacific assessment, Sustainable use assessment
tenure

The act, fact, manner, or condition of holding something in one’s possession, as real estate or an office; occupation.

Pollination assessment
tenure security

An agreement between an individual or group to land and residential property, which is governed and regulated by a legal and administrative framework includes both customary and statutory systems.

Asia-Pacific assessment, Sustainable use assessment, Land degradation and restoration assessment, Global assessment (1st work programme)
tenure

Tenure systems define who can use which Nature’s contributions to people, for how long and under what conditions. Three related aspects of tenure offer a comprehensive understanding of the term. They include (1) tenure as a set of rights, (2) key responsibilities in relation to tenure, and (3) enabling conditions that facilitate governance of tenure. From this combined perspective, tenure is understood as the combination of a set of specific rights that connect the resource users with various aspects of the resource and puts the control and decision-making power in their hands. These rights span social, ecological, economic, and political aspects of tenure, and help provide directions to moving toward effective governance. Rights are connected with responsibilities that range from the duties of the users to maintain the resource to the duties to be performed by the state, and those jointly by both. The exercise of tenure rights can only be possible if certain conditions are meaningfully met because they offer the much required social, ecological, and political environment for the operationalization of tenure rights, performance of the tenure related duties, and necessary security and protection against tenure violations. From an integrated social-ecological (human-environmental) systems perspective, tenure is defined as relationships (also interactions and connections) between people (the users) who seek tenure and between the people (users) and the environment (includes the resource) to which tenure is being sought. Governance of tenure is then about the manner in which these host of relationships, interactions, and connections are addressed and promoted. Tenure in the context of sustainable use of wild species is not a static concept and, therefore, can be best understood as a process and its governance as continuous.

Sustainable use assessment
teratogen

Any agent that causes an abnormality following fetal exposure during pregnancy.

Americas assessment
terrestrial animal harvesting

Terrestrial animal harvesting is defined as the removal from their habitat of animals (vertebrates and invertebrates) that spend some or all of their life cycle in terrestrial environments. As for fishing, terrestrial animal harvesting often results in the death of the animal, but it may not in some cases. To reflect both situations, terrestrial animal harvesting has been sub-divided into a lethal and a “non- lethal” category. Hunting is defined as the lethal category of terrestrial animal harvesting which leads to the killing of the animal, such as in trophy hunting. “Non-lethal” terrestrial animal harvesting is defined as the temporary or permanent capture of live animals from their habitat without intended mortality, such as pet trade, falconry or green hunting. Non-lethal harvest of animals also includes removal of parts or products of animals that do not lead to the mortality of the host, such as vicuña fiber or wild honey. Unintended mortality may however occur in this category and the term “non-lethal” is therefore put in quotes.

Sustainable use assessment
terrestrial productivity

Net Primary Production (NPP) from the terrestrial environment.

Land degradation and restoration assessment
territorial use rights in fisheries

Give a specific harvester exclusive access to ocean areas.

Americas assessment
territorial use rights in fisheries

Give a specific harvester exclusive access to ocean areasJ. E. Wilen, Cancino, & Uchida, 2012.

Global assessment (1st work programme)
thermodynamics

The science of the relationship between heat, work, temperature, and energy. In broad terms, thermodynamics deals with the transfer of energy from one place to another and from one form to another. The key concept is that heat is a form of energy corresponding to a definite amount of mechanical work. The behaviour of a complex thermodynamic system, such as Earth's atmosphere, can be understood by first applying the principles of states and properties to its component parts—in this case, water, water vapour, and the various gases making up the atmosphere. By isolating samples of material whose states and properties can be controlled and manipulated, properties and their interrelations can be studied as the system changes from state to state.

Land degradation and restoration assessment
threatened species

In the IUCN Red List terminology, a threatened species is any species listed in the Red List categories: critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable.

Land degradation and restoration assessment, Global assessment (1st work programme), Global assessment (1st work programme), Sustainable use assessment, Africa assessment, Asia-Pacific assessment, Europe and Central Asia assessment, Americas assessment
threshold effect

Harmful or fatal effect of a small change in environmental conditions that exceeds the limit of tolerance of an organism or population of a species.

Sustainable use assessment
threshold

Magnitudes or intensities that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested.

Asia-Pacific assessment
tidal flat

Intertidal, non-vegetated, soft sediment habitats, found between mean high- water and mean low-water spring tide datums and generally located in estuaries and other low energy marine environments (Dineen, 2010).

Global assessment (1st work programme)
tillage

In agriculture, the preparation of soil for planting and the cultivation of soil after planting.

Land degradation and restoration assessment