Glossary

Food security:
Food security exists when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. (FAO, 2003)
Livelihoods:
A livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets and activities required for a means of living. It includes people's values and aspirations as well as their immediate material needs for living. A livelihood is sustainable if it allows people to cope with and recover from stress and shock and maintain or enhance their capabilities and assets, without undermining the natural resource base and the potential for sustainable economic, socio-cultural and political development.

Livelihoods can be assessed using five sets of indicators: human capital, social capital, physical capital, financial capital, and natural capital. This livelihood concept has been applied mainly at the level of households and local communities.

(Definition adapted from DFID's Sustainable Livelihoods Framework; http://www.cde.unibe.ch/Themes/Liv_Th.asp [Accessed 2012-05-14])
Ontology:
An ontology is a conception of reality or, in other words, how the world is. The term can also be used to describe the study of people's conceptions of reality.
Peasant:
A member of the class constituted by small farmers, tenants and sharecroppers, and labourers on the land where they form the main labour force in agriculture.
Peasantry:
The peasant class; the condition of being a peasant.
Subsistence:
The means of obtaining the necessities of life (food, water, shelter, clothing). In Subsistence farming the purpose is to grow food to meet the needs of the family and/or community, rather than for profit.
Sustainable Development:
The concept of sustainable development includes three dimensions: the economic, socio-cultural/policy, and ecological dimensions. Sustainable development is achieved if development in all three dimensions is sustainable. These dimensions form a triangle that defines how inter- and intra-generational equity can be achieved. Sustainable development has two distinct aspects: the aspect of interactions and relations, and the aspect of value-setting and hence of perception. A focus on the first implies examining the processes that occur within and between the three dimensions of sustainability, while a focus on the second aspect entails dealing with the values assigned to these processes. It is thus normative. As norms differ between societies (and over time), sustainable development can only be meaningfully understood and negotiated in a concrete social context.

Sources: based on Hurni H., Wiesmann U., and Schertenleib R. (editors). Research for Mitigating Syndromes of Global Change. Perspectives of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) North-South, University of Berne, Vol. 1. Berne: Geographica Bernensia, 468 pp. Environment and Development Report 13 and 14, Centre for Development and Environment, University of Berne, 1995 WCED [World Commission on Environment and Development]. 1987. Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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