The 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 28) last year took place in Dubai from 30 November until 12 December 2023. Like preceding years, delegates from all across the globe convened at the venue for discussing ways to tackle climate change, proposing policy changes, and reporting on these changes. Delegations from various youth organizations attended COP28 with the goal of representing young professional voices at the conference. Members of these delegations took part in various events across COP28: these included panel discussions, policy working groups, and different speaking opportunities.
This webinar will showcase the experience of these young professionals at the COP, discuss the key messages on food and agriculture highlighted in COP28 and debrief on the next steps for the SSJW. It will also cover the practical planning, skill development, and preparation needed for participating in global advocacy platforms like the COP.
On November 16 and 17, 2013, a handful of organizations hosted a small conference at the University of Warsaw alongside COP 19 to revisit a 200-year-old geographical concept called the Landscape Approach. Ten years later, the Global Landscape Forum, with the support of the Government of Germany Ministry of Development (BMZ) and of Environment (BMUV), has become a global movement that reaches tens of millions of people each year and a platform for change and political action. Andrew Steer, the Chief Executive of the Bezos Foundation, called it “A decision-forcing forum”. Otto Scharmer, MIT professor and the founder of the Theory of U, said, “… GLF is exactly what is needed now. Let’s keep walking together.”
How did it happen? What makes GLF different? Why is it continuing to grow so fast? Why did 800,000 people from 120 countries engage in a three-hour forum just two months ago? What are the lessons, and where does it go from here? Can it change the world?
Join the Director of GLF and Senior Director of CIFOR-ICRAF John Colmey as he takes us on a journey of the GLF. Along the way, John will share insights on the evolution of the Landscape Approach, sustainable finance, global communication trends, the latest theories of change, and where GLF hopes to be in 2030.
https://www.youtube.com/_s-B9WY6xuM&ab_channel=GlobalLandscapesForum-GLF
The seminar will be livestreamed from the Center for Development Research (ZEF), an international institute conducting interdisciplinary research on development-related issues all over the world. ZEF is part of the University of Bonn.
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John Colmey has spent more than 30 years in Africa, South, East and Southeast Asia: including 10 years as the Director of Communications of CIFOR, where his team increased citations of publications more than ten times, media citations from 75 to 3000 per year, and grew all social media platforms by double and triple digits from 2009-2019. In 2013, John and his colleagues developed and launched the Global Landscapes Forum, today the world’s largest forum on integrated land use, reaching more than two billion people in 175 countries.
In addition to his work at CIFOR/GLF John spent 12 years as a foreign correspondent in radio, broadcast and print, including five years with TIME Magazine where he served as Hong Kong Bureau Chief. As a journalist, he won numerous international and national awards. John has a B.S. in forestry and an M.Ag in technical communication, both from the University of Minnesota, an M.A. in economic geography from the London School of Economics, and an MS. in journalism from Columbia University in New York.
The Global EverGreening Alliance together with the Government of Zambia, AUDA-NEPAD, AFR100 and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration are proud to co-host the world’s largest land restoration programming conference.
Bringing together global thought leaders, change makers and action takers to address key challenges and lay the plans for accelerating the scaling of Nature-based Solutions.
Join progressive governments, investors, NGOs, technical and scientific experts, community representatives and a host of other key stakeholders at this participatory event, and be part of the solution!
Through research entitled Scaling Jurisdictional Approaches in the Indonesian Palm Oil Sector, CIFOR-ICRAF and partners aim to increase the readiness of four palm oil producing regions to implement jurisdictional programmes (JPs) through a participatory, multistakeholder and gender-inclusive approach, and synthesize lessons learned from regency-level studies to strengthen sustainable palm oil initiatives at the national level.
Research activities began by implementing co-design workshops in four regencies: Sintang, Pelalawan, Pulang Pisau and Kutai Kartanegara. At the national level, CIFOR-ICRAF and partners organized the first and second National Workshops and Global Landscape Forum Dialogues in Bogor on 12 October and 23 November 2023, respectively. The aims of the first workshop were to disseminate the results of CIFOR-ICRAF and partners’ regency-level studies, and identify important issues, solutions and actors for jurisdictional approach initiatives for the Indonesian palm oil sector. The second workshop produced a draft national-level Theory of Change (ToC) and the SIPOS (Simulation of Indonesian Palm Oil Sustainability) model. Other output included supply chain analyses of the four regencies where research was carried out to be used as input for processes at the national level.
This workshop will be a forum for national actors to disseminate and discuss relevant issues, and produce recommendations that can contribute to strengthening relationships between JPs and international market demand, advertising-based certification initiatives and national and regional policies.
Objectives
Disseminate CIFOR-ICRAF and partners’ progress and research results on jurisdictional approaches to sustainable palm oil in Indonesia;
Disseminate and share experiences, progress and lessons learned from jurisdictional approach initiatives in Indonesia, especially at the national level;
Disseminate and secure input for a draft TTM – Theory of Change, Theory of Action and Monitoring and Evaluation Framework – which includes issues, solutions, actors, actions, and monitoring indicators needed to strengthen and contribute to sustainable palm oil initiatives at the national level.
In-person participation is by invitation only, for online participation, please register here.
The 17th International Peat Congress (IPC 2024) will be held in Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, China from August 4th to 9th, 2024.The Congress is hosted by the International Peatland Society and organized by Northeast Normal University, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Taizhou University , China Humic Acid Industry Association and Taizhou Peat Research and Development Center.
The proposed theme of the Congress is “Peatlands in a Changing World”. The Congress aims to provide a platform for peatland scientists, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders to stimulate the exchanges of knowledge, best practices and new ideas about multiple functions and biodiversity conservation of peatlands from a global perspective, advocate responsible use of peat and peatland resources, and recognize the values of peatlands in economic, environmental and social aspects from a sustainable perspective in a changing world.
We have an exciting and diverse program planned for the Congress, featuring a range of keynote speakers, symposia, workshops and oral and poster presentations that highlight collaboration between different peatland sectors and disciplines. Attendees will have the opportunity to collaborate and discuss various topics, including but not limited to:
Ecological functions, conversation, and management of peatlands
Peatlands and human life
Technical innovation in peat industry
Tropical peatlands and more!
In addition to a variety of exiting sessions, we have also planned various networking events throughout the week. We warmly welcome all the participants to China!
We will host this virtual community gathering on the topic ‘Rewilding Waterways: Restoring Nature’s Flow’ on Tuesday, November 28th at 4:00PM CET/3:00PM BST/7:00AM PDT. The duration of the event will be of 90 minutes.
The Rewilding Community of Practice aims to build a network of rewilding enthusiasts and professionals who can exchange ideas and information to help build a better world.
This is a fantastic opportunity for budding and more experienced rewilders to learn more about what it takes to rewild waterways from four experienced practitioners with very different approaches to rewilding but have a shared passion for preserving our most precious resource for future generations.
We hope you will join us in our effort to scale our collective impact and rewild our planet!
The Speakers
Nick Steiner (Permanick), Lena Hommes (Wageningen University PhD) and Hanna Öllös & Jonas Sommer (Biking4Biodiversity)
Nick Steiner, Founder of Permanick
Meet Nick Steiner, founder of Permanick and a passionate advocate for one of our most crucial resources—water. By highlighting the significance of water cycles and how to restore them, he empowers and supports busy landowners to achieve more with less effort. Nick’s expertise spans securing drinking water, mitigating droughts and floods, and fostering regenerative landscapes. During this event, Nick wil share insights on how to create healthy and functional ecosystems around us with a specific focus on the use of water in regenerative agriculture.
Lena Hommes PhD, Political Ecology and Water Governance Researcher
Lena Hommes is a researcher in political ecology and water governance in Europe and Latin America. She has worked as lecturer and post-doc researcher at the Water Resources Management Group at Wageningen University on topics related to environmental and water justice, as well as with the German development cooperation in Peru on urban drinking water and sanitation management. More recently Lena has focused on the discussions and conflicts triggered by river restoration projects. She is particularly interested in understanding the diverging ideas and interests about whether nature and rivers should be restored, and how, where and to what degree that should and could be done. In her talk, Lena will share some insights from her research on conflicts around river restoration, specifically dam removal in Spain.
Hanna Öllös & Jonas Sommer, Ecologists and Founders of Biking4Biodiversity
Hanna and Jonas are two ecologists who embarked on a unique journey which they called Biking4Biodiversity. They are on a journalistic conservation mission, cycling across over 20 countries and 20.000 km to discover and share initiatives and the people behind them, who dedicate their lives to the protection of local biodiversity. Through their journey they want to inspire collaborative action based on community conservation, solidarity and climate justice. Local communities are the core of their journey, as they meet organizations, initiatives and individuals in each country and learn about their efforts, challenges and successes in protecting their local nature. After 1,5 years on the road and 17 countries crossed by bicycle, they will be oining the event from Vietnam.
Further event information
Following the speakers’ conversation there will be time for questions from the audience. The event will be a participatory event taking place on Zoom.
APCW 2023 will discuss climate solutions ahead of COP28
Asia-Pacific Climate Week 2023 will take place from 13 to 17 November 2023, hosted by the Johor state government in collaboration with the Government of Malaysia.
The first global stocktake will conclude at COP28 in UAE in December of this year. The stocktake offers a unique opportunity to call for decisive change. It is an opportunity to urgently respond to the need to accelerate progress by collectively embarking on a swift and profound transformation of our economic and social systems. APCW 2023 and all the Regional Climate Weeks provide a platform for policymakers, practitioners, businesses and civil society to exchange on climate solutions, barriers to overcome and opportunities realized in different regions. The Climate Weeks consider four major systems-based tracks with a view to providing region-focused contributions to inform the global stocktake:
Energy systems and industry
Cities, urban and rural settlements, infrastructure and transport
Trees, food, carbon and climate: Connecting the solutions
Choices and actions taken – or not taken – in the next decade will have climate impacts for thousands of years. In the last months of 2023, a year of scorching heat records, the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will meet in Dubai at COP28 to agree on actions that will determine our planet’s future.
As a global leader on forests, trees, agroforestry and soil health, CIFOR-ICRAF has the evidence and insights people need to make these hard choices. Through eye-level dialogue with all stakeholders, our experts continue to inform policies and practices that benefit forests, landscapes and people.
The world is facing a multitude of serious, interconnected challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty and inequality, food and nutritional insecurity, as well as increasing conflict and injustice. To face these challenges, we must address the urgent need for more productive, sustainable, resilient and healthy agri-food systems.
The Global Crop Diversity Trust (Crop Trust) and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (International Plant Treaty), will promote action to transform our food systems by hosting an in-person and live streamed Global Crop Diversity Summit on 14 November 2023 under the patronage of the German Federal President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The Summit will be held at the Französischer Dom in Berlin and will raise political awareness of the important role that crop diversity plays in securing nutritious agri-food systems for us all, and strengthen cooperation among seed banks around the world to increase their impact.
The Summit will contribute to preparations for Climate COP 28 in December 2023 in Dubai, where the Crop Trust will present key findings on the importance of crop diversity for mitigation and adaptation to climate change the negotiators.
The International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) and the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), represented by its branch Embrapa Forestry invite you to the IUFRO LA_2023 Conference for presenting and discussing different initiatives that aim to create future, more resilient landscapes for the benefit of people and nature.
It is being programmed as a hybrid In-person and online conference for an audience of 300 people and will include the presentation of invited and voluntary papers, and discussion panels, in addition to moments of networking and socializing among In-person participants.
The conference seeks to bring together a diverse array of stakeholders: from policymakers and scientists to the private sector and rural communities.
