Adaptive management: Management that includes testing assumptions and hypotheses, continuous monitoring, learning, and adjusting activities during the course of the project.

Advocacy: An action directed at changing the policies, positions or programs of any type of institution.

Age-sex structure: The composition of a population as determined by the number or proportion of males and females in each age category. The age-sex structure of a population is the cumulative result of past trends in fertility, mortality, and migration. Information on age-sex composition is essential for the description and analysis of many other types of demographic data. See also population pyramid.

Aging of population: A process in which the proportions of adults and elderly increase in a human population, while the proportions of children and adolescents decrease. This process results in a rise in the median age of the population. Aging occurs when fertility rates decline while life expectancy remains constant or improves at the older ages.

Agroforestry: Land-use systems that combine agriculture and forestry practices to create a more holistic, integrated, profitable, and sustainable system of food and fiber production.

Alternative livelihoods: Income-generating activities that are ecologically sound alternatives to unsustainable resource extraction.

Baseline data: Data gathered at the start of a project and that serve as a yardstick against which to measure change during the project.

Biodiversity: Short for biological diversity, it is the variety and variability of life, including the diversity of genes within species, the diversity of species, the diversity of communities and ecosystems, and the diversity of ecological processes.

Biosphere reserves: Internationally recognized areas within UNESCO's Man and the biosphere (MAB) Program that promote a balanced relationship between people and nature to reconcile the conservation of biodiversity with its sustainable use.

Birth control: Practices employed by couples that permit sexual intercourse with reduced likelihood of conception and birth. The term birth control is often used synonymously with such terms as contraception, fertility control, and family planning. But birth control includes abortion to prevent a birth, whereas family planning methods explicitly do not include abortion.

Birth rate (or crude birth rate): The number of live births per 1,000 population in a given year. Not to be confused with the growth rate.

Bushmeat: Meat from animals caught in the wild (in Africa, the forest is called 'the bush'). Often caught by poachers, a commercial trade exists in many species of wild animals, including some endangered species.

Coalition: A group of organizations working together in a coordinated fashion toward a common goal.

Capacity building: An explicit intervention to improve an organization's performance in relation to its purpose, context, resources and sustainability.

Census: A canvass of a given area, resulting in an enumeration of the entire population and often the compilation of other demographic, social, and economic information pertaining to that population at a specific time. See also survey.

Childbearing years: The reproductive age span of women, assumed for statistical purposes to be 15-44 or 15-49 years of age.

Civil society: The network of non-governmental organizations, other groups (media, research, activists, etc.) and individuals that influence political processes in a society.

Collaboration: A mutually beneficial relationship between two or more parties who work towards common goals by sharing responsibility: authority; and accountability for achieving results.

Collaborative management: Partnership among different stakeholders for the management of a territory or set of resources.

Community: A group of people that often share a common identity and language and that identify themselves as a group. Communities are often determined by geographic boundaries.

Community conservation: An approach to conservation characterized by cross-sectoral strategies, analysis of social, economic, and cultural factors, and concern for the well-being of human communities.

Community development: A socio-political process undertaken by an organized group of people to improve the social, economic, cultural and/or environmental situation of their community.

Conceptual framework: A descriptive diagram that portrays a set of relationships between factors that impact a target condition.

Conflict management: A process of negotiation, mediation, or arbitration to resolve

Consensus: Agreement of a group of people (stakeholders) to accept a certain plan of action.

Contraceptive prevalence: Percentage of couples currently using a contraceptive method.

Death Rate (or crude death rate): The number of deaths per 1,000 population in a given year.

Demographic Transition: The historical shift of birth and death rates from high to low levels in a population. The decline of mortality usually precedes the decline in fertility, thus resulting in rapid population growth during the transition period.

Demography: The scientific study of human populations, including their sizes, compositions, distributions, densities, growth, and other characteristics, as well as the causes and consequences of changes in these factors.

Dependency ratio: The ratio of the economically dependent part of the population to the productive part; arbitrarily defined as the ratio of the elderly (ages 65 and older) plus the young (under age 15) to the population in the working ages (ages 15-64).

Doubling time: The number of years required for the population of an area to double its present size, given the current rate of population growth.

Economic development: The creation, maintenance and distribution of wealth and income within a community and a society.

Economic valuation: A method for assigning economic values to biological resources.

Ecoregion: Ecoregions (or ecozones) are relatively large units of land or water that contain distinct assemblages of natural communities sharing a majority of species, climate, soils, environmental conditions, and general topography.

Ecosystem services: The services provided by ecosystems and ecological processes, including regulation of water flows and maintenance of water quality; the formation of soil, prevention of soil erosion, and nutrient cycling that maintains soil fertility; degradation of wastes and pollution; pest and pathogen control; pollination; and climate regulation through carbon storage and sequestration.

Ecotourism: Recreational activities that draw paying tourists to a conservation site because they are dependent on the values provided by aspects of biodiversity at the site; at least some emphasis is given to ecologically benign, minimum impact activities and infrastructure.

Endemic species: Species found only in a relatively small geographic area and nowhere else, such as Galapagos finches.

Environmental education: Environmental education is a process of developing a world population that is aware of and concerned about the total environment and its associated problems, and which has the skills and commitment to work towards solutions.

Facilitator: The person who guides a group discussion, such as in a planning meeting or a focus group, but who does not dictate the outcome.

Family Planning: The conscious effort of couples to regulate the number and spacing of births through artificial and natural methods of contraception. Family planning connotes conception control to avoid pregnancy and abortion, but it also includes efforts of couples to induce pregnancy.

Focus group: A facilitated discussion on a specific topic or topics with groups of people with similar backgrounds, for data collection.

Forest certification: Programs to audit and certify to consumers that wood and other forest products are produced in forests managed in responsible or sustainable ways.

Gender: The socially defined roles and responsibilities attached to women and men. Gender is culturally derived and varies in different cultures and through time, unlike sex, which is a biological condition.

Governance: A decision-making structure and a policy environment that support equitable access to the benefits of social processes, including conservation and natural resource management.

Growth Rate: The number of people added to (or subtracted from) a population in a year due to natural increase and net migration expressed as a percentage of the population at the beginning of the time period.

Household: One or more persons occupying a housing unit.

Hypothesis: A formal statement about the relationships between factors in a conceptual model and that can be tested.

Indicators: Variables that are influenced by project interventions or management activities and that can be monitored to provide evidence of progress or success. Good indicators are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based (SMART).

Immigration: The process of entering one country from another to take up permanent or semi-permanent residence.

Infant Mortality Rate: The number of deaths of infants under age 1 per 1,000 live births in a given year.

In-migration: The process of entering one administrative subdivision of a country (such as a province or state) from another subdivision to take up residence.

Learning organizations: Organizations that document the processes they go through and their results, in order to improve their performance and outcomes in the next project cycle.

Life Expectancy: The average number of additional years a person could expect to live if current mortality trends were to continue for the rest of that person's life. Most commonly cited as life expectancy at birth.

Life Table: A tabular display of life expectancy and the probability of dying at each age (or age group) for a given human population, according to the age-specific death rates prevailing at that time. The life table gives an organized, complete picture of a population's mortality.

Maternal Mortality Ratio: The number of women who die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth complications per 100,000 live births in a given year.

Migration: The movement of people across a specified boundary for the purpose of establishing a new or semi-permanent residence. Divided into international migration (migration between countries) and internal migration (migration within a country).

Mission statement: A brief statement of an organization's purpose that guides its work.

Monitoring: The periodic collection and evaluation of data relative to stated project goals, objectives, and activities.

Mortality: Deaths as a component of human population change.

Natural Increase (or Decrease): The surplus (or deficit) of births over deaths in a population in a given time period.

Nonmaterial values: The benefits other than direct material uses or ecosystem services that people derive from the natural world and its resources, including spiritual, esthetic, educational, recreational, historical, and scientific benefits.

Organizational development: A process of strengthening the capacity of organizations to increase their effectiveness in achieving their goals.

Participation: The involvement of stakeholders in planning, priority-setting, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of activities and programs.

Point of entry: The way to gain access to the audience you wish to reach. It might be a specific time, a particular place, or a person that can help you get the attention of your audience.

Policy action: The steps taken to address a problem by changing or reinforcing a policy.

Population dynamics: The growth or decline of a human population in a specific geographic area.

Project cycle: A reiterative process of action incorporating a number of stages to manage the process over time. A basic project cycle includes defining strategy (planning), developing work plans, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and analyzing and adjusting the project

Protected areas: Areas managed to maintain certain elements of biodiversity and the values they provide.

Qualitative research: Systematic research methodology that collects experiences, events, opinions, and behaviors that are not easily quantified. Qualitative research techniques include observation, in-depth interviews and focus groups.

Quantitative research: Research methodology that takes or collects measurements and statistics from a small population to draw conclusions about the larger population. Surveys and polls like questionnaires are quantitative research techniques.

Resource extraction: The act of removing resources from an ecosystem without replacing them, such as logging, fishing, coral mining, etc.

Self-assessment: Reviewing the status or process of your own particular project, event, or institution, without outside assistance.

Social marketing: The application of models and techniques derived from commercial marketing and from behavioral psychology to promote new behaviors that have positive social values, such as biodiversity conservation (for example, pride in an endemic species, using condoms to prevent disease, etc.).

Social science: The study of people and their interactions with one another and/or with the landscape or natural environment. Social science fields relevant to biodiversity conservation include: anthropology, economics, human geography, political science, political ecology, psychology, and sociology.

Social science tools: In the context of biodiversity conservation, these are methods derived from any of the social science fields used in a strategic manner to gain a more complete understanding of the interactions between and among human and ecological systems.

Socio-economic assessments: A process of gathering information about social, economic, and cultural factors, specifically the socioeconomic drivers of biodiversity change, and analyzing the data to inform project development.

Stakeholder: Any person, group, or institution that-positively or negatively-affects or is affected by a particular issue or outcome.

Stakeholder analysis: The collection of knowledge about important stakeholders which is organized in a way that enables a better understanding of how each stakeholder influences the environment or natural resources of concern.

Strategic planning: A process for defining the overall aim of a group or a project and then deciding what types of activities you will carry out to achieve your ends within a given timeframe.

Sustainable forest management: Management of natural forests for sustainable uses.

Sustainable use: The uses of the biological products and ecological services of ecosystems in a manner and at a rate that does not reduce the system's ability to provide those products and services to future generations.

Tenure: Recognized rights and responsibilities (e.g., formal and legal authority) to use and manage an area of land or water and/or the biodiversity resources found there.

Vision: An organizational statement that describes how the world would be different if the organization were completely successful.

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©2003 Community Conservation Coalition