IPBES core glossary

Local communities” refers to non-indigenous communities with historical linkages to places and livelihoods characterized by long- term relationships with the natural environment, often over generations.

A group of individuals that interact within their immediate surroundings and/or direct mutual influences in their daily life. In this sense, a rural village, a clan in transhumance or the inhabitants of an urban neighbourhood can be considered a local community, but not all the inhabitants of a district, a city quarter or even a rural town. A local community could be permanently settled or mobile.

Knowledge about nature, including organisms (animals and plants), ecosystems and ecological interactions, held by local people who interact with and use natural resources. This is a manifestation of indigenous local knowledge (ILK), but includes also knowledge held by those local people who may not be officially recognized as indigenous (in legal terms). Like traditional ecological knowledge, LEK can be seen as a knowledge-practice-belief complex. In other words, it is a cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission (Berkes, 2012). This encompasses ways of knowing and doing, which are dynamic concepts relying on building on experience and adapting to changes, thereby imbibe a strong learning-by-doing component.

Local economies and subsistence economies are defined as those that are small in scale and in which the use of resources (including wild species) are limited and exclusively used to meet local needs rather than accumulated or sold for profit.

Logging is defined as the removal of whole trees or woody parts of trees from their habitat. Logging generally results in the death of the tree, but also includes cases in which it may not, such as coppicing. Logging occurs in forests that may be classified as primary, naturally regenerating, planted, and plantation. This assessment does not address logging from plantation forests except as it has bearing on the practice in the other forest types. Harvest of non-woody parts of trees ( leaves, propagules and bark) are here defined as gathering.

A subfield of ecology that deals with the study of relationships between organisms and their environment at large spatial scales, and involves characterizing and explaining statistical patterns of abundance, distribution and diversity.

Mainstreaming means integrating actions related to conservation of biodiversity into strategies relating to production sectors.

Mainstreaming, in the context of biodiversity, means integrating actions or policies related to biodiversity into broader development processes or policies such as those aimed at poverty reduction, or tackling climate change.

A trait that is, or has become, more harmful than helpful, in contrast with an adaptation, which is more helpful than harmful (Barnett & O’Neill, 2010).

Malnutrition refers to deficiencies, excesses or imbalances in a person’s intake of energy and/or nutrients. The term malnutrition covers 2 broad groups of conditions. One is ‘undernutrition’—which includes stunting (low height for age), wasting (low weight for height), underweight (low weight for age) and micronutrient deficiencies or insufficiencies (a lack of important vitamins and minerals). The other is overweight, obesity and diet-related noncommunicable diseases (such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer).

A kind of pollinator that is maintained by human beings through husbandry (e.g. some honey bees, some leafcutting and orchard bees, some bumble bees). The terms can be broadened to include wild pollinators (q.v.) that flourish by human encouragement.

The management of wild species is the management process influencing interactions among and between wild species, its habitats and humans to achieve predefined impacts valued by stakeholders. It attempts to balance the needs of wild species and the preservation of the ecosystems they inhabit with the needs of humans, using the best available sources of knowledge.

Group of trees and shrubs that live in the coastal intertidal zone. Mangrove forests only grow at tropical and subtropical latitudes near the equator because they cannot withstand freezing temperatures.

Land having limitations which in aggregate are severe for sustained application of a given use. On these lands, options are limited for diversification without the use of inputs; inappropriate management of lands may cause irreversible degradation.

Land having limitations which in aggregate are severe for sustained application of a given use. On these lands, options are limited for diversification without the use of inputs; inappropriate management of lands may cause irreversible degradation (CGIAR,.

Lands less suited for crop or livestock production.

Marginalization refers to the set of processes through which some individuals and groups face systematic disadvantages in their interactions with dominant social, political and economic institutions. The disadvantages arise from class status, social group identity (kinship, ethnicity, caste and race), political affiliation, gender, age and disability.

Marginalisation is a complex and multidimensional concept, which simply cannot be seen as a state of being ( a condition of low income or food insecurity) but needs to be considered a process over time with several inter-related elements interacting with social and economic conditions, political standing, and environmental health. A full understanding of the term marginalisation needs to be based on the view that the best judge of poverty and marginalisation are the people experiencing it.

Marginalized communities, peoples or populations are groups and communities that experience discrimination and exclusion (social, political and economic) because of unequal power relationships across economic, political, social and cultural dimensions (National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health.

A branch of aquaculture involving the culture of organisms in a medium or environment which may be completely marine (sea), or sea water mixed to various degrees with fresh water, including brackishwater areas (SIVALINGAM, 1981).

Refers to situations whereby the market fails to give efficient allocation of resources, due to non-fulfilment of free and competitive market structure.

Refer to economic factors affecting the price of, demand for, and availability of a commodity.

Comparison between input and output mass of materials to solve for losses such as oxidation.

The maximum sustainable yield (MSY) for a given fish stock means the highest possible annual catch that can be sustained over time, by keeping the stock at the level producing maximum growth. The MSY refers to a hypothetical equilibrium state between the exploited population and the fishing activity.

An indicator of naturalness or biodiversity intactness. It is defined as the mean abundance of original species relative to their abundance in undisturbed ecosystems. An MSA (Mean Species Abundance) of 0% means a completely destructed ecosystem, with no original species remaining.

see process-based model.

A model with hypothesized relationship between the variables in the dataset where the nature of the relationship is specified in terms of the biological processes that are thought to have given rise to the data.

17 countries that harbor 70% of the species diversity of the planet. Seven such countries are in the Americas. In alphabetical order: Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, USA, Venezuela.

Countries (17) which have been identified as the most biodiversity-rich countries of the world, with a particular focus on endemic biodiversity (UNEP-WCMC, 2014).

Countries (17) which have been identified as the most biodiversity- rich countries of the world, with a particular focus on endemic biodiversity.

Synonym for moist areas (IUCN, 2012a).

A quantitative statistical analysis of several separate but similar experiments or studies in order to test the pooled data for statistical significance.

Chemical transformations that sustain life at the cell level.

The small-scale physical requirements of a particular organism or population.

Plastic debris that are less than five millimeters in length (NOAA, 2018a).

A change in gene frequency within a population. Evolution at this scale can be observed over short periods of time - for example, between one generation and the next, the frequency of a gene for pesticide resistance in a population of crop pests increases. Such a change might come about because natural selection favored the gene, because the population received new immigrants carrying the gene, because some nonresistant genes mutated to the resistant version, or because of random genetic drift from one generation to the next.