ERA's Carbon Glossary

AAU - Assigned Amount Unit is a tradable ‘Kyoto unit’ representing an allowance to emit one metric tonne of greenhouse gases expressed as carbon dioxide equivalents.
Additionality - Refers to a carbon emission reduction, avoidance, or removal, that has occurred through an action, intervention, or undertaking, that is explicitly directed to climate mitigation and is beyond what would occur under a "business as usual" scenario. Such considered carbon offsets can be sold within offset markets. Various standards, including ISO, VCS and CCBA, may be used to ensure an appropriate level of rigour has been applied to quantifying the reduction, avoidance or removal, and confirm that there is no "double counting" of the benefits.
Afforestation (AF) - Planting of new forests on lands that historically have not been covered in forests.
AFOLU - Agriculture, Forestry, and other Land Uses. Following the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventories, the AFOLU consolidates the previous sectors LULUCF (Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry) and agriculture.
Atmosphere - The gaseous envelope surrounding the earth; the air.
Avoided Deforestation - (AD) - Refers to the prevention or reduction of forest loss in order to reduce emissions of global warming gases.
Baseline - A scenario that represents the anthropogenic emissions (human-caused GHG emissions) that would occur in the absence of the proposed project activity. For example, in REDD projects the baseline is a key component because emissions reductions credits are generated based on performance against the baseline.
Base Year - Targets for reducing GHG emissions are often defined in relation to a base year. In the Kyoto Protocol, 1990 is the base year for most countries for the major GHGs.
Biodiversity - The diversity of plant and animal life in a particular habitat or in the world as a whole. A high level of native biodiversity is considered desirable.
Business as Usual Scenario (BAU) - Refers to the baseline scenario that examines the consequences of continuing current trends in in an activity and could represent the "statasquo" non-projoct case.
Carbon - A naturally abundant, nonmetallic element that occurs in all organic compounds and can be found in all known forms of life, sometimes referred to as the "mineral of life".
Carbon Cycle - Refers to carbon flows amoungst the four main reservoirs of carbon: the atmosphere, the terrestrial biosphere (usually includes freshwater systems), oceans, and sediments (including fossil fuels). Oceans contains the largest pool of carbon near the surface of the Earth, but most of that pool is not involved with rapid exchange with the atmosphere. The annual movements or cycling of carbon, the carbon exchanges between reservoirs, occur because of various chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes.
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) - A colourless, odorless gas that is released to the atmosphere when any fuel containing carbon is burned. It is also released during respiration. CO2 is produced by the decay of organic matter and is absorbed by plants in photosynthesis. CO2 is used in thousands of industrial applications and processes and is the principal greenhouse gas.
Carbon Footprint - A measure of the amount of CO2 emitted through the use of energy and the combustion of fossil fuels and land use activities undertaken by an organization. This footprint is most often expressed in tonnes of carbon dioxide or CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) on a monthly or yearly basis.
Carbon Dioxide Equivalent - CO2e - A quantity that describes, for a specific greenhouse gas, the amount of CO2 that would have an equivalent global warming potential (GWP) when measured over a specified timescale. The GWPs of the 3 GHGs associated with forestry are as follows: CO2, GWP defined as 1. Methane with a GWP of 22. Nitrous oxide has a GWP of 310.
Carbon Neutrality - Involves measuring all GHG emissions for which an entity is responsible, pursuing actions to reduce those emissions as much as reasonably possible, and offsetting the remaining emissions through the acquisition and retiring of verified emissions reductions (VERs).
Carbon Offset - Is a financial instrument representing a reduction in¸ or removal of, greenhouse gas emissions. Although there are six primary categories of greenhouse gases, carbon offsets are measured in metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e). One carbon offset represents the reduction of one metric ton of carbon dioxide, or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases, based on their global warming potential. There are two primary markets for carbon offsets. In the compliance market, companies, governments or other entities buy carbon offsets in order to comply with regulated caps on the total amount of carbon dioxide they are allowed to emit. In the voluntary market, individuals, companies, or governments purchase carbon offsets to mitigate their own greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, electricity use, and other sources.
Carbon Pools - A reservoir of carbon. Carbon pools are measured in metric tonnes of carbon. The major carbon pools associated with forestry projects include live biomass (including above and belowground components such as roots), dead biomass, soil and wood products.
Carbon Sequestration - Is the uptake and storage of carbon through biological processes, or geological processes. Trees and plants, for example, absorb and store the carbon through photosynthesis.
Carbon Sinks - Any process, activity or mechanism that result sin the net removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Carbon Stocks - The quantity of carbon held within a pool at a specified time.
Carbon Source - Opposite of a carbon sink. A carbon pool is a net source of carbon to the atmosphere if less carbon is flowing into it than is flowing out of it.
CCBA - Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance is a partnership between leading companies, environmental organizations and research institutes, to establish validation and verification standards.
CERP: Community Ecosystem Restoration Program is a partnership initiative with municipalities in which carbon financing can fund restoration work. The initiative establishes low risk, high yield carbon sinks over the 100-year term of the projects. The goal of the restoration activities is to recover the high levels of carbon, biomass, and biodiversity that existed originally in these areas. CERP projects integrate meaningful community and stakeholder communication and collaboration in the planning and implementation process.
Climate Change - Refers to any significant change in measures of climate (such as temperature, precipitation, or wind) lasting for an extended period (decades or longer). Climate change may result from:
1. Natural factors, such as changes in the sun's intensity or slow changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun;
2. Natural processes within the climate system (e.g. changes in ocean circulation);
3. Human activities that change the atmosphere's composition (e.g. through burning fossil fuels) and the land surface (e.g. deforestation, reforestation, urbanization, desertification, etc.)
Climate Change Mitigation - The reduction of GHG emissions directed to achieve stabilization of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere and subsequently a cessation of further warming.
Co-Benefits - Are additional benefits avising from policies and projects that are implemented for climate change mitigation. Co-benefits can be of an environmental or social nature.
Deforestation - Conversion of forest to non-forest with the depletion of tree crown cover to less than 10%. This is often cited as one of the major causes of the enhanced greenhouse effect for two reasons: 1) the burning or decomposition of wood that occurs as a result of deforestation releases carbon dioxide; and 2) trees that once removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using the process of photosynthesis are no longer doing so.
EconeutralTM - Trade Marked name of a carbon offset product that has ecological co-benefits including restoring native biodiversity, habitat enhancement, endangered species refugia, water filtration and other positive environmental attributes.
Ecosystem - A community of organisms together with their physical environment, viewed as a system of interacting and interdependent relationships and including such processes as the flow of energy through trophic levels and the cycling of chemical elements and compounds through living and non living components of the system.
Emission - A substance discharged into the air, through an industrial process or operation, or land use activities.
Ex-Ante - Ex-ante refers to GHG reductions or removals that are forecasted for a defined period using approved measurements and modeling techniques.
Ex-Post - Ex-post refers to the measurement of emission reductions which have already occurred on site as a result of the project activities.
Fossil Fuel - Combustible organic material such as oil, coal or natural gas, derived from the biological remains of a previous geologic time, and used as fuel.
Forest - There are many definitions of forests. The FAO definition is land with tree crown cover (or equivalent stocking level) of more than 10% and an area of more than 0.5 ha. Trees should be able to reach a height of more than 5 metres.
Forest Degradation - Changes within the forest class (e.g., from closed to open forest) that negatively affect the stand or site - and in particular, lower the production capacity.
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) - A gas present in the earth's atmosphere that has a heat trapping effect. Principle GHGs are CO2, CH4, N2O and fluorocarbons.
International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - Is a scientific body tasked to evaluate the risk of climate change caused by human activity. The panel was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), two organizations of the United Nations. The IPCC does not carry out research, nor does it monitor climate or related phenomena. A main activity of the IPCC is publishing special reports on topics relevant to the implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international treaty that acknowledges the possibility of harmful climate change; implementation of the UNFCCC led eventually to the Kyoto Protocol. The IPCC bases its assessment mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific literature.
Invasive Species - Non-native species that threaten ecosystems, habitats or species.
ISO: International Organization for Standardization. ISO is the world's largest developer and publisher of International Standards.
Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) - Has been the subject of two major reports by the IPCC. LULUCF can add or remove carbon dioxide (or more generally, carbon) from the atmosphere, contributing to or mitigating climate change. Additionally, land use is of critical importance for biodiversity.
Leakage - Refers to the indirect impact that a targeted land use, land use change or forest activity in a certain place at a certain time has on carbon storage at another place or time. The term leakage has generally been used in the context of project-based accounting to refer to impacts outside the project boundary.
Metric Tonne - Is the common international measurement for the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions. A metric tonne is equal to 2205 lbs or 1.1 short tons.
Native Species - Native species are considered those that are part of the composition of a natural representative ecosystem of an area where a project site is located.
Non-Native Species - occurring outside their natural range, whether accidentally or intentionally introduced.
Offset - An activity or product that counterbalances, counteracts or compensates for another activity. Carbon offsets may neutralize carbon emissions. Emission reductions (including those gained by using avoidance or reduction based offset programs) still leave behind a residual carbon "footprint" that must be neutralized by using removal offsets.
PDD: Project Design Document describes a carbon project's design, including its baseline and monitoring plan.
Permanence - The longevity of a carbon pool and the stability of its stocks given the management and the disturbance environment in which it occurs. A feature of LULUCF projects is the possibility of a reversal of carbon benefits from either natural disturbances such as fires, disease, pests and unusual weather events or from the lack of reliable guarantees that the original land use activities will not return after the project concludes. Strategies have been identified that mitigate potential reversals such as the establishment of contingency carbon credits, insurance, conservation easements and mixed portfolios of projects.
Photosynthesis - The process in green plants and certain other organisms by which carbohydrates are synthesized from carbon dioxide and water using light as an energy source. Most forms of photosynthesis release oxygen as a byproduct. Photosynthesis is the only viable way known to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
REDD - Is an acronym that stands for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. At the 13th UNFCCC Conference of the Parties in Bali, REDD was listed among other mitigation activities as a potential means to achieve emission targets and voluntary action on REDD was encouraged. Many of the current REDD projects focus on forest conservation that creates reserves and parks to protect threatened forests. These place-based REDD projects preserve the carbon stocks on a parcel of land that otherwise would be deforested.
Reforestation - Planting of forests on lands that have previously contained forests within the relatively recent past.
Refugia - An area where special environmental circumstances have enabled a species or a community of species to survive after extinction in surrounding areas.
Removal - A decrease in GHG emissions in the atmosphere through a removal accomplished through photosynthesis.
Sink - Is any process, activity or mechanism which removes and stores a greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.
Source - Any process or activity that releases a GHG into the atmosphere
Species - A group of closely related and interbreeding living things; the smallest standard unit of biological classification.
Validation: The assessment of a Project Design Document (PDD) by an independent third party, before the implementation of the project and against the requirements of a specific standard.
VCS - Voluntary Carbon Standard. The VCS is one of the preferred standards and provides a robust, new global standard for the approval of credible voluntary offsets.
Verification: Provides an independent third party assessment of the expected or actual emission reductions of a particular abatement project.