Climate Smart Agriculture Sourcebook
Glossary

R

Rangeland

Land on which the indigenous vegetation (climax or natural potential) is predominantly grasses, grass-like plants, forbs, or shrubs and is managed as a natural ecosystem. If plants are introduced, they are managed similarly. Rangelands include natural grasslands, savannas, shrublands, many deserts, tundras, alpine communities, marshes and meadows. [International Society for Range Management]

Recovery

The restoring or improving of livelihoods and health, as well as economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets, systems and activities, of a disaster affected community or society, aligning with the principles of sustainable development and “build back better”, to avoid or reduce future disaster risk.

Resilience

The ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate, adapt to, transform and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions through risk management.

Response diversity

Diversity of responses to environmental change among species that contribute to the same ecosystem function. Redundancy of species for each function allows for continued ecosystem functioning and provisioning of ecosystem services. An agro-ecosystem that contains a high degree of response diversity will be more resilient against various types and degrees of shocks.

Risk mitigation

The lessening or minimizing of the adverse impacts of a hazardous event. Annotation: The adverse impacts of hazards, in particular natural hazards, often cannot be prevented fully, but their scale or severity can be substantially lessened by various strategies and actions. Mitigation measures include engineering techniques and hazard-resistant construction as well as improved environmental and social policies and public awareness. It should be noted that, in climate change policy, “mitigation” is defined differently, and is the term used for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that are the source of climate change.

Risk transfer

The process of formally or informally shifting the financial consequences of particular risks from one party to another, whereby a household, community, enterprise or State authority will obtain resources from the other party after a disaster occurs, in exchange for ongoing or compensatory social or financial benefits provided to that other party.

Rotational culture

The sequential farming of rice and fish on the same unit of land.

Rotational grazing

The shifting of livestock to different units of a pasture or range in regular sequence to permit the recovery and growth of the pasture plants after grazing.