Climate change has spawned many new buzzwords. The following list may help you better understand some of these terms as they apply to forests.
Adaptation: naturally occurring or synthetic adjustments in natural or human systems that try to reduce the harm or exploit the benefit from global warming.
Afforestation: planting new forests on lands that have not previously contained forests.
Anthropogenic emissions: greenhouse gases associated with human activity, such as deforestation from logging.
Biofuels: fuel from renewable biological sources, such as plants. Sources linked with deforestation include palm oil and soy beans.
Carbon Dioxide (CO2): a naturally occurring gas, as well as a by-product of burning fossil fuels and biomass, or other land use changes and industrial processes.
Carbon sequestration: the uptake and storage of carbon. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and release the oxygen via photosynthesis.
Carbon sink: areas that absorb and retain a high concentration of CO2, such as oceans, soil and forests. Can be artificial too.
Carbon tax: surcharge levied on energy sources that emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM): scheme that helps industrialised countries meet their Kyoto Protocol emission targets by investing in emission reduction activities in developing countries.
Climate change: a gradual change in the “average weather” that a given region experiences due to changes in concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Conference of the Parties (COP): a decision-making body comprised of the parties that have ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Deforestation: the change of forested lands to non-forest uses.
Ecosystem services: the benefits that an ecosystem provides to human life. Forests provide food, water, timber, fibre; they regulate climate, floods, disease, and water quality; they also deliver “cultural services” such as recreational, aesthetic, and spiritual pursuits.
Ecosystem: A community of organisms and its physical environment.
Global warming: the average increase in the Earth’s temperature, which leads to changes in the climate.
Greenhouse effect: occurs when gases such as C02 prevent the heat generated by the sun and radiated back from the earth to escape the Earth’s atmosphere.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): a joint UNEP-WMO body responsible for providing the scientific and technical foundation for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Kyoto Protocol: an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as 5 percent from the 1990 level, in order to slow global warming.
Mitigation: taking actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to enhance carbon sinks aimed at reducing the extent of global warming.
Payments for environmental services: schemes where beneficiaries of ecosystem services pay those who manage them to ensure the services continue.
Peat: an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation matter. Peat forms in wetlands variously called bogs or moors, and peat swamp forests.
Planted forest: wooded land where trees have been established through planting or seeding.
Primary forest: wooded land of native species largely untouched by human activities and where the ecological processes are not significantly disturbed.
REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation): a mechanism aimed at reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by compensating countries for avoiding deforestation and degradation.
Reduced impact logging (RIL): planned and carefully controlled tree felling to minimise the impact on the surrounding environment.
Reforestation: establishment of forest plantations in areas regarded as former forest lands.
Stern Review: 2006 report by Sir Nicholas Stern for the British Government that examines the effect of climate change on the world economy. Not the first such report but perhaps the most influential.
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): 1992 treaty calling for the stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would not affect the climate.
Story by Greg Clough, CIFOR and USAID