As we proceed through the 21st century and confront today’s biodiversity crisis, we on one hand realize how intertwined our well-being is with our biodiversity and ecosystem health, and on the other hand, we find ourselves immersed in a globalized urban cultural dimension detached from our roots.

While the world seems to get further entangled in a web of concurrent crises, there are a growing number of leaders and experts who are sparking new hope and trust in the future. GLF took the effort to find the experts sharing their visions on the state of biodiversity and gathered them in a single digital space to share their inspirational knowledge. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to listen in, learn and get inspired on why biodiversity is essential to building back better.

Indigenous peoples are the time-immemorial guardians of many of the world’s remaining biodiversity-rich landscapes – and of the spirituality, values and worldviews embedded in these physical spaces. As human encroachments threaten Indigenous ways of life and connection to land, the world urgently needs to find ways to support this guardianship to help ensure the health of the planet and diversity of species. This interactive plenary will amplify the voices of Indigenous guardians, and will provide a platform for civil society groups, the private sector, policy-makers, local authorities and youth to discuss and explore processes that draw from Indigenous peoples and local communities’ knowledge to generate scalable solutions to contemporary challenges. These solutions will be rooted in reciprocity, will help to achieve human and ecological well-being, and will promote just and sustainable decision-making that restores harmony between people and nature.
Find this session’s white paper here.

Two days of dialogue and debate will compel participants to get ready for a strong call to global action. But what action is most urgently needed? So many of us are pleading for transformative change – but what does this require? Experts will discuss the need for a fundamental, system-wide change across technological, economic and social factors, including changing paradigms, goals and values. To achieve this, we must move away from looking at biodiversity as a production factor to seeing it as an integral part of life, without which we cannot survive. Moving from an economy of exploitation to an economy of restoration will require individual and collective behavioural change.

The Closing Plenary will be opened by Elizabeth Mrema, Executive Secretary of the CBD and will start with a conversation between Christiane Paulus, Director General at BMU, Carla Montesi, Director at DEVCO and Carlos Rodriguez, CEO of GEF, before moving to a dynamic panel of representatives from youth, government, business, civil society and indigenous people.
Participants will join the discussion and contribute to the transformative change which we will initiate here.

The variety of life on Earth is being lost at an unprecedented rate. Now more than ever, the health of our planet requires us to recognize our complex, interdependent relationships with nature. During this opening plenary, keynote speakers will interact with the online community to frame the wicked problems of biodiversity loss alongside land degradation, climate change and the emergence of zoonotic pandemics. We kick off the conference with a call for a One Health approach, spotlighting the essential role of biodiversity and setting the scene for building back better.

This participatory plenary will be framed around the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, the Paris climate goals and the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, all of which call on the global community to ‘bend the curve’ on these critical issues. Key global policy makers, scientists as well as business and community leaders will inform the audience about plans in place for the new decade, and engage in critical discussion. Through constructive debate, we will explore how the new policy frameworks can spark a vivid societal dialogue, consolidate next steps and pave the way for direct global action from individuals, civil society, local authorities and the global business community.

Agricultural supply chains are the leading driver of deforestation globally, contributing to the depletion of biodiversity and natural ecosystems. In this plenary, the audience will get an inside look at the interrelation between finance for biodiversity and sustainable land use and healthy landscapes and sustainable, inclusive value chains. A discussion among experts will place local communities at the heart of the discussion while exploring the innovative financial instruments that are needed to spark a bioeconomy, grounded in the rights and expertise of local communities.

The session will envisage what the next steps should be for SDG 2.5 in the post-2020 Agenda. Where do we go from here? It will seek to demonstrate why agrobiodiversity is essential to ensure food and nutrition security for current and future global populations. The greater the diversity, the more resilient the system. Protecting crops and livestock from pests and disease, and ensuring they have improved resistance to increasing climatic shocks is essential. But how do we get there?

In Latin America, multiple drivers are putting pressure on biodiversity and natural ecosystems. This plenary will build on the issues raised in the ‘Financing Diversity’ plenary to shed light on opportunities and challenges to sustainable climate finance in the Amazon basin and the Latin American region at large. The debate will speak to financial innovations at the intersection of biodiversity and climate action and explore the initiatives and instruments needed to achieve a bio-economy that is truly based on nature’s richness, is gender–inclusive, and is grounded in the rights and expertise of Indigenous Peoples.

The two-part discussion will primarily be held in Portuguese and Spanish, with English translation.

While the world seems to get further entangled in a web of concurrent crises, there are a growing number of leaders and experts who are sparking new hope and trust in the future. GLF took the effort to find the experts sharing their visions on the state of biodiversity and gathered them in a single digital space to share their inspirational knowledge. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to listen in, learn and get inspired on why biodiversity is essential to building back better.

Indigenous peoples are the time-immemorial guardians of many of the world’s remaining biodiversity-rich landscapes – and of the spirituality, values and worldviews embedded in these physical spaces. As human encroachments threaten Indigenous ways of life and connection to land, the world urgently needs to find ways to support this guardianship to help ensure the health of the planet and diversity of species. This interactive plenary will amplify the voices of Indigenous guardians, and will provide a platform for civil society groups, the private sector, policy-makers, local authorities and youth to discuss and explore processes that draw from Indigenous peoples and local communities’ knowledge to generate scalable solutions to contemporary challenges. These solutions will be rooted in reciprocity, will help to achieve human and ecological well-being, and will promote just and sustainable decision-making that restores harmony between people and nature.
Find this session’s white paper here.

Two days of dialogue and debate will compel participants to get ready for a strong call to global action. But what action is most urgently needed? So many of us are pleading for transformative change – but what does this require? Experts will discuss the need for a fundamental, system-wide change across technological, economic and social factors, including changing paradigms, goals and values. To achieve this, we must move away from looking at biodiversity as a production factor to seeing it as an integral part of life, without which we cannot survive. Moving from an economy of exploitation to an economy of restoration will require individual and collective behavioural change.

The Closing Plenary will be opened by Elizabeth Mrema, Executive Secretary of the CBD and will start with a conversation between Christiane Paulus, Director General at BMU, Carla Montesi, Director at DEVCO and Carlos Rodriguez, CEO of GEF, before moving to a dynamic panel of representatives from youth, government, business, civil society and indigenous people.
Participants will join the discussion and contribute to the transformative change which we will initiate here.

Agriculture is the main income source for most rural households in Asia and the Pacific region. However, the increasing biodiversity loss due to climate change represents a huge threat to people’s livelihoods, the consequences of which could be even more dangerous than the COVID-19 pandemic. To promote youth engagement in biodiversity protection toward achieving the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, this Youth Daily Show – led by Young Professionals for Agricultural Development (YPARD) in collaboration with the Youth in Landscapes Initiative (YIL) – will explore what young Indigenous people working in agriculture are doing to preserve biodiversity

Years from now, historians will be discussing the reality we are living and the tomorrow we are defining. What will they call this age? The age of climate denial, the age of biodiversity loss or could it possible be the age of collective action? In a critical moment for the planet and all its peoples, the IPBES 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, suggest that we all get on the train of Transformative Change – a profound, fundamental, system-wide and strategic change in discourses, actions, values and policy. 

As we proceed through the 21st century and confront today’s biodiversity crisis, we on one hand realize how intertwined our well-being is with our biodiversity and ecosystem health, and on the other hand, we find ourselves immersed in a globalized urban cultural dimension detached from our roots.