This plenary session represents a first. It is the first time in the five-year history of the Global Landscapes Forum that community members and/or their representatives have constituted a plenary session. The aim is to amplify community voices in global policy debates.

A short, three minute film on landscape restoration in Burkina Faso will kick off the session, which will subsequently shine a light on the efforts of communities, some of them decades-long, in restoring degraded forests and landscapes. Participants will present key achievements, factors enabling such achievement and key opportunities for landscape restoration going forward. In particular, the meaning of “success” from the perspective of communities will be probed. Discussions will also focus on measures for scaling up community initiatives within and across settings.

Key questions
1. What are the key insights from your story that others can learn from?
2. What is next, how do we scale up to something large and impactful – creating a mass movement across the continent?

Our esteemed group of panelists represents different ethnicities, gender, production systems and ecologies:

• Haidar El Ali coordinated the world’s largest mangrove restoration project. He was also Senegal’s minister of Environment and later became Senegal’s Minister of Fisheries.
• Daniel Kobei heads the Ogiek People’s Development Program based in the Mau forest in Kenya. He led a long, grueling and eventually successful fight for the tenure rights of the indigenous Ogiek people.
• Zipporah Matumbi began her successful journey in activism and forest restoration in Kenya by lobbying and organizing against the dumping of garbage in forests. She was subsequently elected to lead community forestry organizations where she initiated and supported forest restoration.
• Concepta Mukasa is an NGO activist from Uganda who has focused on strengthening women’s rights to trees and forests, using this as an entry point for their involvement in restoration activities on and off farm.
• Lassane Zorome is a Burkinabe farmer who has engaged in landscape restoration for more than two decades. His efforts to restore degraded lands in his community improved tree cover to the point where people could no longer see houses from surrounding neighborhoods. Because Mr. Zorome is unable to attend the GLF, he will be represented by Mr. Serge Zoubga, an NGO practitioner.
• Esther Mwangi, Principal Scientist at CIFOR and Team Leader of the Nairobi Hub will moderate the plenary session.