Implementing One World - One Health to safeguard biodiversity
How can we harness the power of landscapes?
Recommendations to implement a One World - One Health approach
The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) community consists of tens of thousands of scientists, environmental practitioners, policy-makers, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), youth, private corporations, financial institutions, and the wider public from 7,400 organizations and 185 countries. This powerful network will be instrumental in successfully contributing to the implementation of a biodiversity action plan, monitoring progress on global restoration efforts and sustaining momentum for building knowledge on the nexus between biodiversity and health. The post-2020 global biodiversity framework and the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) provide opportunities to strengthen frameworks that will guide biodiversity and restoration policy and action in the coming years.
The GLF Biodiversity Policy Recommendations Report synthesizes the recommendations and supporting pathways to achieving key paradigm shifts proposed by the GLF community. These offer guidance on harnessing the power of landscapes to achieve biodiversity and restoration ambitions of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, meet the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and realize the United Nations CBD’s 2050 Vision of “Living in Harmony with Nature”.
The report is a product of an intergenerational collaboration between GLF, the Youth in Landscapes Initiative (YIL), delegates from 26 youth organizations, with input from partners that participated in GLF’s October 2020 biodiversity conference.
Policy Recommendations
Include public health perspectives in landscape and ecosystem management
The climate and biodiversity loss crises must be treated as pressing public health concerns. Many experts have called for closer collaboration between the landscape approach and the One Health approach. Decision-makers, scientists, communities and practitioners should work with public health experts, including traditional knowledge holders, in all stages of landscape management, conservation and restoration activities.
Transform financial structures for conservation and restoration, especially through re-targeting of subsidies and stimulating youth employment
National governments, in collaboration with regional and local governments, the private sector, financial institutions and civil society, should: emphasize holistic measures of prosperity that encompass more complex indicators; re-allocate harmful subsidies on the basis of local ecosystem and livelihood needs; promote sustainable procurement, investment and supply-chain infrastructure; and consider economic stimulus measures that promote youth capacity building and employment in conservation and restoration at scale.
- LANDSCAPE NETWORKS FOR RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Enable community ownership of decision-making structures and resource flows
Stronger measures are needed to promote community ownership of financing mechanisms, food systems and ensure greater agency in value chains. Priority areas include, but are not limited to, engaging with the growing number of landscape networks to build on local initiatives, enhancing capacity of and framework support for community-based business and young professionals for employment and building local processing and distribution infrastructure to shorten value chains.
Commit support to, and engage in, inclusive knowledge-sharing platforms
Platforms that facilitate global, regional and national cross-sectoral collaborations and trust-building can generate and sustain political support in achieving restoration and biodiversity goals. Platforms should strive for decentralized governance that spans sectors, regions and governance levels, and include expertise representing all stakeholder needs, especially knowledge from IPLC, women and youth.
Promote the application of rights-based approaches in sustainable development and upholding rights
Rights-based approaches for sustainable development can help clarify how decision-makers uphold rights; including by ensuring that rights holder participation is meaningful and that free, prior and informed consent is properly obtained. Specific IPLC rights to be addressed in international frameworks include but are not limited to land tenure, formalizing customary rights when possible, rights to produce and right to decide in spatial planning in area-based conservation and restoration measures.
Scale local initiatives and successes, in lieu of imposing solutions top-down
Scaling locally managed initiatives can tackle local environmental challenges and address global ones. Building the capacity of Indigenous, local and young researchers and storytellers can conserve critical ecological knowledge. Tools for intra- and inter-community learning can help to build capacity while promoting community ownership over solutions, measures and actions.
Support communities which have the most at stake in the climate, health and biodiversity crises to own development discourse
Communities often risk losing ownership over paradigms in which they have high stakes, such as “nature-based solutions”. Space in international fora prevents co-opting of these concepts at communities’ expense, such as via greenwashing. Through a landscape approach lens, the local concepts, needs and debates can be included at regional, national and international decision making levels.
We want to hear from you - Get involved
How do you think the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) post-2020 global biodiversity framework and United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration can best harness the power of landscapes to catalyze transformative change towards living in harmony with nature?
Submit a comment to accompany the policy recommendations that will be shared with decision-makers, using the form below. These comments will help boost the recommendations’ impact by providing individual and organizational testimony to the importance of the above recommendations and highlight considerations in their application.
Youth Open Letter
We, the youth of the world, have a plan for the health of the people and of our planet.
The current patterns of production, consumption, landscape degradation and pollution have led to the many challenges that all generations are collectively facing: particularly the biodiversity, climate and health crises.
As youth, we are already taking action on these issues.
Now we urge world leaders, decision-makers, civil society organizations, and individuals to recognize the importance of sustaining a healthy planet and address the inevitable products of our capitalist and colonial system.
We must achieve a world where all communities have access to restore and practice stewardship over their landscapes.
We need to find the resources and tools that are grounded in inclusive knowledge to build a sustainable, resilient, and equitable world for current and future generations.
We need everyone to realise that the Earth’s health is our health, and that having a safe place to call home is not an option, but a fundamental human right.
White Papers
