What is an alien species? In the world of biodiversity policy, an alien species is cause for concern, but not a reason to call the European Space Agency, or the Men in Black.

Whilst mutually consistent definitions are crucial, the landscape becomes foggy when it comes to multi-dimensional topics such as biodiversity. A lawyer, a farmer and a scientist will view a protected area through completely different lenses, yet we need to talk about the same thing.

This is one of the many reasons why the Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity decided to develop, with the support of the Knowledge4Policy team, a dedicated glossary bringing together definitions from EU law, environmental sciences, and those used for monitoring of statistics. More specifically, the EURO-Lex, the EEA and EUROSTAT.

The KCBD Glossary primarily targets EC policy staff, whether new to biodiversity or not, who might not be familiar with the (policy) context of the use of a term. The KCBD Glossary is a living document, currently containing 59 terms originating from the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and contributions by colleagues from different services, in particular the JRC, DGs RTD, ENV and EUROSTAT, and the EEA.

This new tool introduced by the KCBD is aimed at enhancing consistency across the EU by allowing definitions from different sources to be compared, providing a wider understanding, and facilitating the creation of definitions (possibly based on already existing ones) when needed.

You can explore the KCBD Glossary, and you can also contact us if you have any feedback.