Glossary

Carbon Saving Community

These are low income areas identified as part of the ECO policy. Energy suppliers are required to install energy efficiency measures in households in these areas according to targets set on a per-supplier basis.

Carbon Storage and Sequestration

The process of increasing the carbon content of a reservoir/pool other than the atmosphere1 There are several ways that this can occur, including through industrial techniques. However, in the context of green infrastructure this primarily refers to natural processes, e.g. how “trees remove carbon in the form of CO2 from the atmosphere and store it as carbon in the form of wood”2.   

 

IPCC (2007) Glossary 

Forestry Commission (2014) 

Child Poverty Act (2010)

The Child Poverty Act (2010) aimed to define success in eradicating child poverty and create a framework to monitor progress at a national and local level. Four targets were identified for achievement by 2020. The Child Poverty Strategy for 2014-2017 was published in July 2014.

 

From parliament.co.uk, Child Poverty Act 2010: a short guide - Commons Library Standard Note, July 2014

Civil Contingencies Act (2004)

The Civil Contingencies Act, and accompanying non-legislative measures, delivers a single framework for civil protection in the UK. The Act is separated into 2 substantive parts: local arrangements for civil protection (Part 1); and emergency powers (Part 2). The Act sets out the basis for emergency planning in the UK.

 

Civil Contingencies Act (2004)

Climate

Climate is typically defined as the average weather (or more rigorously a statistical description of the average in terms of the mean and variability) over a period of time, usually 30 years. These quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation, and wind. Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a statistical description, of the climate system.

 

UKCIP website, 2014

Climate disadvantage

Climate disadvantage is a function of (a) the likelihood and degree of exposure to a hazard and (b) individual or group vulnerability with regards to such hazards. It can be estimated and mapped through the combination of representations of hazard-exposure and representations of socio-spatial vulnerability. Also see flood and heat disadvantage.

 

Lindley, S., O’Neill, J., Kandeh, J., Lawson, N., Christian, R. & O’Neill M. (2011) “Climate change, justice and vulnerability”, Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report, York

 

Where are the most climate disadvantaged communities?

Climate Projection

A well-defined plausible climate future. Two climate change projections are considered here, namely a +2oC and +4oC change in Global Mean Temperature (GMT) by the 2080s.

Climate projections

Climate projections expressed in terms of absolute values (as opposed to the relative value expressed in future climate change projections). It is a  projection of the response of the climate system to scenarios based upon climate model simulations and past observations. Climate change projections are expressed as an absolute future climate, for example, that future average daily temperature in the summer will be 34°C for a given location, time period and emissions scenario.

 

From Ecocities, based on the UK Climate Projections 2009 website.

Co-production

Co‐production means delivering public services in an equal and reciprocal relationship between professionals, people using services, their families and their neighbours. Where activities are co‐produced in this way, both services and neighbourhoods become far more effective agents of change.

 

New Economics Foundation

Coastal flooding

Flooding from the sea arising when tidal surge, wave action or a combination of both overtop or overflow the shoreline boundary.

Collective Switching

Occurs when consumers group together, typically facilitated by an independent organisation, to negotiate with multiple suppliers in order to secure a better deal on their energy supply costs.

 

Ofgem

Collective switching schemes

Collective switching schemes involve a group of households banding together to negotiate a better deal with gas and electricity suppliers, with the lead organisation (which could be a local authority, non-profit organisation or business) acting as an intermediary agent.

Community energy

The Government’s Community Energy Strategy 2014 defines this as ‘community projects or initiatives focused on the four strands of reducing energy use, managing energy better, generating energy or purchasing energy.' (p20) They are owned, led and / or controlled by the community, which can be a community of place or a community of interest.

 

Community flood wardens

Flood Warden Schemes are owned and run by members of the Parish Council or the Local Community and supported by the Environment Agency. They consist of nominated volunteers who receive direct flood warnings from the Agency and pass these on to their neighbours. The number of flood wardens will depend on the size of the community and may be operated by a single individual.

 

Environment Agency leaflet on Flood Warden Schemes

Community resilience plans

According to gov.uk ‘Community Resilience is about communities using local resources and knowledge to help themselves during an emergency in a way that complements the local emergency services’. Part of that process involves planning. One example is a Community Emergency Plan, step-by-step guidance for which is available here.

 

Gov.uk guidance "Resilience in society: infrastructure, communities and businesses"

Compounded injustice

Compounded injustice refers to the way that different forms of injustice can combine to place additional and excessive disadvantage on individuals or groups.

Conversion factors (personal, social, environmental)

The personal, environmental and social factors that determine how positive or negative events are converted into gains and losses in well-being:

 

Personal: features of the individual such as disability, age and health that affect the way in which resources and hazards produce different effects on well-being;

 

Environmental: features of the physical environment such as the availability of green space, quality of housing stock, elevation of buildings and access to public space that affect the way in which resources and hazards produce different welfare effects on well-being;

 

Social: features of the social and institutional context and situation, such as the strength of social networks, the cohesion of neighbourhoods, the institutional regimes in nursing homes, and levels of inequality and income, which affect the way in which resources and hazards produce different welfare effects on well-being.

 

Lindley, S., O’Neill, J., Kandeh, J., Lawson, N., Christian, R. & O’Neill M. (2011) “Climate change, justice and vulnerability”, Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report, York