Tourism & CC Challenges & Opportunities - Global Commons Institute

7.0 Glossary
Glossary
Afforestation
Planting of new forests on lands that historically have
not contained forests (for a discussion of the term forest
and related terms such as afforestation, reforestation, and
deforestation, see the IPCC Special Report on Land Use
Land-Use Change, and Forestry (IPCC, 2000).
Anthropogenic
Resulting from or produced by human beings.
Annex I countries
Annex I Parties include the industrialized countries that
were members of the OECD (Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development) in 1992, plus countries
with economies in transition (the EIT Parties), including
the Russian Federation, the Baltic States, and several
Central and Eastern European States.
Carbon compensation or offsetting
The process by which an amount of greenhouse gas
emissions equal to that caused by a certain activity, i.e. a
flight, is reduced, or offset, elsewhere.
Capacity Building
The mobilization of individual and organisational assets
from the community and combining those assets with
others to achieve community building goals. It is a
process of developing the technical skills, institutional
capability, and personnel to develop and implement
actions.
Certified Emission Reduction (CER) Unit -
Equal to 1 tonne (metric ton) of CO 2
-equivalent emissions
reduced or sequestered through a Clean Development
Mechanism project, calculated using Global Warming
Potentials.
Clean Development Mechanism - Defined in Article
12 of the Kyoto Protocol, the Clean Development
Mechanism is intended to meet two objectives: (1)
to assist Parties not included in Annex I in achieving
sustainable development and in contributing to the
ultimate objective of the convention; and (2) to assist
Parties included in Annex I in achieving compliance
with their quantified emission limitation and reduction
commitments.
Climate
Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the
“average weather,” or more rigorously, as the statistical
description in terms of the mean and variability of
relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from
months to thousands of years. The classical period
is 3 decades, as defined by the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO). These quantities are most often
surface variables such as temperature, precipitation, and
wind. Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a
statistical description, of the climate system.
Climate Change
Climate change refers to any change in climate over
time, whether due to natural variability or as a result
of human activity. This usage differs from that in the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC), which defines “climate change” as: “a change
of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to
human activity that alters the composition of the global
atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate
variability observed over comparable time periods”.
CO 2
-e, or CO 2
equivalent
The concentration of carbon dioxide that would cause
the same amount of radiative forcing as a given mixture
of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (cf.
Global Warming Potential).
Destination
A location visited by tourists. Can comprise various levels
of scale, for instance a local tourism system, a region, or
a country.
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