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Deforestation
Conversion of forest to non-forest3
Demand-side management
Policies and programmes designed for a specific purpose to influence consumer
demand for goods and/or services. In the energy sector, for instance, it refers
to policies and programmes designed to reduce consumer demand for electricity
and other energy sources. It helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Dematerialization
The process by which economic activity is decoupled from matter–energy
throughput, through processes such as eco-efficient production or industrial
ecology, allowing environmental impact to fall per unit of economic
activity.
Deposit–refund system
Combines a deposit or fee (tax) on a commodity with a refund or rebate (subsidy)
for implementation of a specified action. See also emissions tax.
Desertification
Land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas resulting from
various factors, including climatic variations and human activities. Further,
the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) defines land
degradation as a reduction or loss, in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas,
of the biological or economic productivity and complexity of rain-fed cropland,
irrigated cropland, or range, pasture, forest, and woodlands resulting from
land uses or from a process or combination of processes, including processes
arising from human activities and habitation patterns, such as: (i) soil erosion
caused by wind and/or water; (ii) deterioration of the physical, chemical and
biological or economic properties of soil; and (iii) long-term loss of natural
vegetation.
Double dividend
The effect that revenue-generating instruments, such as a carbon tax
or auctioned (tradable) carbon emission permits, can (1) limit or reduce greenhouse
gas emissions and (2) offset at least part of the potential welfare
losses of climate policies through recycling the revenue in the economy to reduce
other taxes likely to be distortionary. In a world with involuntary unemployment,
the climate change policy adopted may have an effect (a positive
or negative “third dividend”) on employment. Weak double dividend
occurs as long as there is a revenue-recycling effect; that is, as long as revenues
are recycled through reductions in the marginal rates of distortionary taxes.
Strong double dividend requires that the (beneficial) revenue recycling effect
more than offset the combination of the primary cost and in this case, the net
cost of abatement is negative. See also interaction effects.
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