Drought preparedness is defined as established policies and specified plans and activities taken before drought to prepare people and enhance institutional and coping capacities, to forecast or warn of approaching dangers, and to ensure coordinated and effective response in a drought situation (contingency planning). (UN/ISDR Terminology of Disaster Risk Reduction. Cited in FAO & National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC). 2008. The Near East drought planning manual: guidelines for drought mitigation and preparedness planning. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Regional Office for the Near East, Cairo and University of Nebraska-Lincoln, National Drought Mitigation Center.)
Numerical concept related to gender equality. The equal representation of women and men in a specific area. Gender parity is a key component for achieving gender equality. (EIGE. 2026. Glossary: gender parity. https://eige.europa.eu/publications-resources/thesaurus/terms/1258 and FAO, NRI and AWARD. 2026. The status of women in agrifood systems in sub-Saharan Africa. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd9262en)
Note
Gender parity concerns relative equality in terms of numbers and proportions of women and men, girls and boys, and is often calculated as the ratio of female-to-male values for a given indicator. When males-to-females ratios are calculated instead, the label ‘sex ratio’ is used instead of ‘gender parity’. For the state in which women and men enjoy equal rights, opportunities and entitlements in civil and political life, see "gender equality" <c_03ae1678>.
Time, under defined storage conditions, during which food remains safe, retains desired sensory, chemical, physical and biological characteristics and complies with any label declaration. (Decker, E.A. 2010. Oxidation in foods and beverages and antioxidant applications. Volume 1: Understanding mechanisms of oxidation and antioxidant activity. In: epdf.tips. https://epdf.tips/oxidation-in-foods-and-beverages-and-antioxidant-applications-volume-1.html)
(1) Cumulative (positive) difference between precipitation and potential evapotranspiration during a certain period. (2) Amount of water in a reservoir or supply system in excess of demand. (WMO/UNESCO. 2011. International Glossary of Hydrology. WMO-No. 385. https://library.wmo.int/idurl/4/35589)
The term 'returnee' refers to a refugee or internally displaced person who has returned to their country or area of origin to remain there permanently. However, they are not yet fully reintegrated into their community. A returnee loses their refugee status once they return. (UNHCR. 2026. Who we protect. https://www.unhcr.org/about-unhcr/who-we-protect/returnees)
A biological, chemical or physical agent in, or condition of, food, with the potential to cause an adverse health effect. (WHO & FAO. 2006. Food safety risk analysis : a guide for national food safety authorities. World Health Organization. https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/43718)
Note
Food-borne hazards can be microbiological, chemical or physical in nature and are often invisible to the eye. Bacteria, viruses and pesticide residues are some common examples of food-borne hazards.
Polluting carbon substance released into atmosphere: carbon dioxide and/or carbon monoxide produced by motor vehicles and industrial processes and forming pollutants in the atmosphere. (UNTERM)
Condition in which anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with a subject are balanced by anthropogenic CO2 removals. The subject can be an entity such as a country, an organisation, a district or a commodity, or an activity such as a service and an event. Carbon neutrality is often assessed over the lifecycle including indirect (‘scope 3’) emissions, but can also be limited to the emissions and removals, over a specified period, for which the subject has direct control, as determined by the relevant scheme. (IPCC. 2018. Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C - SR15 (10/2018). https://apps.ipcc.ch/glossary/search.php)
Note
In some cases achieving carbon neutrality may rely on the supplementary use of offsets to balance emissions that remain after actions by the reporting entity are taken into account. Carbon neutrality and net zero CO2 emissions are overlapping concepts
Descriptions of specific amino acid, carbohydrate, or nucleotide sequences which have appeared in the published literature and/or are deposited in and maintained by databanks such as GENBANK, European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), National Biomedical Research Foundation (NBRF), or other sequence repositories. (DeCS/MESH. 2016. Molecular Sequence Data https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/record/ui?ui=D008969)
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living. The HDI is the geometric mean of normalized indices for each of the three dimensions. (UNDP. 2026. Human Development Index (HDI). https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/indicies/HDI)
An oceanic front is a narrow zone of enhanced horizontal gradients of water properties (temperature, salinity, nutrients, etc.) that separates broader areas with different water masses or different vertical structure (stratification). Fronts are often described as discontinuities because of their abrupt nature. Fronts occur on a variety of length scales, from a few meters up to many thousands of kilometers. Fronts can be short-lived (days), although most fronts are quasi-stationary and seasonally persistent; prominent fronts are present year-around. (Belkin, I., Cornillon, P., Sherman, K. 2009. Fronts in large ecosystems”, Progress in Oceanography, 81. 223-236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2009.04.015)
Note
The oceanic front, a narrow transition zone delineating diverse water masses in the ocean, plays a crucial role in marine ecosystems, climate patterns, and ocean dynamics.
Technological hazards originate from technological or industrial conditions, dangerous procedures, infrastructure failures or specific human activities. Examples include industrial pollution, nuclear radiation, toxic wastes, dam failures, transport accidents, factory explosions, fires and chemical spills. Technological hazards also may arise directly as a result of the impacts of a natural hazard event. (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). 2017. The Sendai Framework Terminology on Disaster Risk Reduction. "Hazard". Accessed 18 March 2026. https://www.undrr.org/terminology/hazard.)
Note
Entre los ejemplos de amenazas tecnológicas se encuentran la contaminación industrial, la radiación nuclear, los desechos tóxicos, la ruptura de represas, los accidentes de transporte, las explosiones de fábricas, los incendios y el derrame de químicos.
Development of new or improved technologies, devices, machinery, digital solutions, or biotechnologies that enhance sustainability, productivity, efficiency, or resilience in systems. They include mechanization, digital technologies, biotechnologies, nanotechnologies... (Adapted from FAO. 2026. Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Portal. https://sti-portal.fao.org/taxonomies/type)
Pertaining to streams or rivers which are poor in nutritive materials and which do not produce abundant organisms in relation to their volume. They contain abundant oxygen in their lower regions. (FAO. 1978. Glossary of inland fishery terms, EIFAC Occasional Paper No. 12. https://www.fao.org/4/ae987b/AE987B02.htm)
Deep learning (DL) is an area of Machine Learning that attempts to mimic how the layered activity of the brain’s neurons allows people to learn to recognize complex patterns in data. “Deep” refers to the large number of layers of neurons in contemporary models that help to learn rich representations of data to achieve better performance gains. (FAO. 2025. Digital agriculture and AI innovation roadmap – For the global agrifood systems transformation. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd5956en)
A preserved potato product traditionally made by Quechua and Aymara communities of Bolivia and Peru, and is known in various countries of South America, including Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Northwest Argentina. Dehydrated potatoes, called chuño, are conserved for years and used as primary source of food during dry periods. (Adapted from World Potato Congress, personal communication and FAO. 2024. The potato’s travel through ages and continents https://www.fao.org/newsroom/story/the-potatos-travel-through-ages-and-continents/en)
Note
Chuño is one of the most important legacies of Andean civilization. Due to its portability, long shelf life, and nutritional value, chuño still plays an important role in food security today in the Andes and is also exported to surrounding countries in LAC and even to other countries where people of Andean origin are living.
Wood flooring system consisting of a top layer of solid wood of at least 2,5 mm thickness with or without additional layer(s). Parquet is either solid parquet or multilayer parquet. (ISO. 2019. ISO 5323:2019 . Wood flooring and parquet — Vocabulary . https://www.iso.org/standard/74838.html)
A negative regulator of muscle mass, resulting in a high increase in muscle mass in animals with a myostatin mutation or deletion. (Brandenberg, O., Dhlamini, Z., Sensi, A., Ghosh, K., Sonnino, A. 2011. Introduction to Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering. In Brandenberg, O., Dhlamini, Z., Sensi, A., Ghosh, K., Sonnino, A. Biosafety Resource Book https://www.fao.org/4/i1905e/i1905e.pdf)
Amphidromous fish are born in freshwater/estuaries, then drift into the ocean as larvae before migrating back into freshwater to grow into adults and spawn. (Cooney, P. 2013. Friends of Merrymeeting Bay. Anadromous, Catadromous, Amphidromous, Oceanodromous, or Potamodromous. https://cybrary.fomb.org/pages/Fish_Migration_Categories.pdf)
Natural capital accounting is a tool to measure the changes in the stock and condition of natural capital (ecosystems) at a variety of scales and to integrate the flow and value of ecosystem services into accounting and reporting systems in a standard way. (European Commission. 2026. Natural capital accounting. https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/natural-capital-accounting_en)
A cockle is an edible marine bivalve mollusc. Although many small edible bivalves are loosely called cockles, true cockles are species in the family Cardiidae (Wikipedia. 2025. Cockle (bivalve) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockle_(bivalve))
The scattering of x-rays by matter, especially crystals, with accompanying variation in intensity due to interference effects. Analysis of the crystal structure of materials is performed by passing x-rays through them and registering the diffraction image of the rays. (DeCS/MESH. 2016. X-Ray Diffraction https://decs.bvsalud.org/en/ths/resource/?id=15359)
Note
X-ray diffraction (XRD) is a non-destructive technique for analyzing the structure of materials, primarily at the atomic or molecular level.
Olive pomace is a thick sludge, the main residue of the olive oil extraction process. It is the remaining pulpy material after removing most of the oil from the olive paste and it consists of pieces of skin, pulp, stone, and olive kernel. The commercial value depends on its oil and water content. (Skaltsounis, Alexios-Leandros & Argyropoulou, Aikaterini & Aligiannis, Nektarios & Xynos, Nikos. (2015). Recovery of High Added Value Compounds from Olive Tree Products and Olive Processing Byproducts. 10.1016/B978-1-63067-041-2.50017-3.)
