Bringing Evidence to Bear for Scaling Landscape Restoration

Landscape restoration offers a critical pathway to transform global food systems, harnessing ecological and economic complexities. It requires the engagement of multiple actors across scales, as well as innovative approaches that build on credible scientific evidence. This requires stakeholder engagement approaches designed to integrate evidence and learning into programme and policy development.

We have entered the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, which signals an understanding of the critical contribution of restoration to the economic, social, and environmental objectives, as well as strong political will and commitment at the global level. However, the integration and use of evidence to leverage investments (locally, regionally and globally) still remains a key opportunity.

This session will highlight the role for evidence and science-based action to implement and scale landscape restoration interventions. We will engage in discussions around the evidence gaps and remaining questions that currently inhibit the scaling of restoration. We will showcase restoration action “on the ground” that integrates both capacity development and monitoring into the project cycle for more effective outcomes. We will showcase the concept of the Restoration Transformative Partnership Platform (TPPs) for evidence generation and leveraging at the local and global levels. TPPs are alliances, each focused on a critically important issue, in this case ecosystem restoration, that deliver a specific transformational result. Members of the TPP will collaborate to generate solutions through understanding problems, data collection, analysis and engagement processes. In closing, we will highlight an example of engagement with evidence for policy action at the national level, with a specific example from Kenya.

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Global Biodiversity Festival

May 22nd is the International Day for Biological Diversity, celebrate with a virtual extravaganza featuring scientists, explorers and conservationists from across the globe!

The Global Biodiversity Festival is a virtual weekend for the general public, with a simple goal of shining a spotlight on biodiversity loss. This is a truly global event that will bounce us around the globe as we celebrate the weird and the wonderful, highlight the challenges life faces and some good news conservation stories. From the 20th – 23rd of May, we’ll share the diverse stories and challenges of scientists, explorers, conservationists, filmmakers and policy makers on the frontlines of the race to save the incredible variety of life on our planet…and ourselves.

We launched the Global Biodiversity Festival in May 2020 with 68 speakers from around the world, published an incredible book and raised money for several conservation organizations. This year, we’re pushing the boundaries of what a virtual festival can be and creating a truly global event! We’ll be broadcasting live for 72 hours straight, with 150+ speakers spanning the globe and exploring biodiversity from every angle.

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RISE Africa 2021

RISE Africa brings together thinkers, doers and enablers, and promotes art, creative expression and other ways of knowing to Inspire Action for Sustainable Cities

Join the movement

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Unlocking $100 Billion For Restoring Africa’s Landscapes

How do we get there? Join leaders from civil society, philanthropy, business, and government for a open discussion on this key question for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

2030 is a big year for Africa: By then, governments have committed to begin restoring more than 100 million ha of degraded landscapes through the AFR100 Initiative and the Great Green Wall. Growing trees, revitalizing grasslands, planting mangroves, and a host of other techniques would provide a future that is more food-, water-, and energy-secure. It would also be a major financial boon for rural communities: For every $1 invested in restoring land, people can see $7-30 in economic benefits. At minimum, investing $100 billion across 100 million restored hectares could add more than $700 billion of value.

Galvanized by that opportunity and successful projects from past decades, investors recently committed more than $14 billion for implementing the Great Green Wall over the next five years. And last year, corporations announced that they would invest in protecting, growing, and restoring 1 trillion trees around the world as part of their plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

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Forest and Landscape Restoration Monitoring

Showcasing existing national environment and Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) monitoring frameworks, identify some monitoring platforms and processes to contribute to the national FLR progress reporting as well as identify lessons learned, gaps, and the way forward for FLR monitoring in Kenya.

The keynote speakers are Prof Hamadi Boga: Principal Secretary – State Department for Crop Development and Agricultural Research and Dr. Chris Kiptoo: Principal Secretary – Ministry of Environment and Forestry. We will also have speakers from the Kenya Forest Service (KFS), Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), Kenya Water Towers Agency (KWTA), Council of Governors (CoG), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), Global EverGreening Alliance (GEA) and World Resources Institute (WRI).

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Global Symposium on Soil Biodiversity

In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the Global Symposium on Soil Biodiversity (GSOBI21), ‘Keep soil alive, protect soil biodiversity’ will be a science-policy meeting, fully virtual that will take place from 19-22 April 2021. Due to its new format and the time difference between the different regions of the world, adjustments have been made to the current agenda.

It is jointly organized by the UN FAO and its Global Soil Partnership (GSP), the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils (ITPS), together with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative (GSBI) and the Science-Policy Interface of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (SPI UNCCD).

The main objective will be to fill some critical knowledge gaps and promote discussion among policy makers, food producers, scientists, practitioners and other stakeholders on solutions to live in harmony with nature, and ultimately, achieve the SDGs through the conservation and sustainable use of soil biodiversity.

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From Policy to Action: Forest and economic revival with bamboo

Registration is required for this event. Register here.

INBAR will be hosting a side event at this Forum: ‘From policy to action: forest and economic revival with bamboo‘. The event will draw on two thematic priorities of UNFF16: ‘Enhancing forest-based economic, social and environmental benefits’ and ‘Reversing the loss of forest cover’.

This side event will present three case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America, about the use of bamboo for forest and landscape restoration, and as a tool for livelihood and poverty reduction. The case studies will focus specifically on: product innovations and industrial value chains in Asia; energy value chain in Africa; and bamboo housing in Latin America.

The event will have one keynote speech, and three expert speakers. The presentations will be followed by a Q&A session.

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Restoring Forests and Landscapes series: Consolidating gains and accelerating progress in the Phillipines

The Philippines is in a strategic position to respond not only to the Bonn Challenge but also to the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, 2021 to 2030.

The Decade is designed as the global movement that can end poverty, hunger, malnutrition, gender inequality and the degradation of ecosystems by harnessing the power of nature and local communities.

To showcase and consolidate the Philippines’ accomplishments and potentially set a national restoration agenda to which all stakeholders are committed, a webinar series and conference-workshop are proposed.

The webinars will discuss the forestland restoration (FLR) concept in the context of the Philippines (first webinar); the experiences of various groups in implementing FLR in the country (second and third webinars); and funding mechanisms and opportunities for FLR (fourth webinar).

A conference-workshop will follow the series to identify opportunities and mechanisms to cascade national FLR targets to local levels, building on existing restoration initiatives.

The webinars are knowledge-intensive and provide a platform to share experience, highlight challenges and limitations, and take an inclusive approach to identify options for the Philippines’ participation in these important international movements. The conference-workshop will serve as the culminating activity, with an end goal of setting a common national restoration agenda.

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Digital Forum: Nature-Based Solutions

Over 40 percent of the world’s population is affected by land degradation.

Land degradation threatens food security, fuels violent conflict, drives biodiversity loss and contributes to the climate crisis through carbon and nitrous oxide emissions. It costs the global economy around USD 6–10 trillion per year, or roughly 10 percent of gross world product.

One of the most promising solutions to land degradation is forest and landscape restoration (FLR), which aims to regain ecological functionality and enhance human well-being in deforested or degraded landscapes. More than 2 billion hectares of such landscapes stand to be restored globally. However, FLR implementation still remains far below the level needed to address land degradation on a global scale.

On 29 April 2021, the Global Landscapes Forum will organize a digital forum on FLR hosted jointly by the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) and the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration (GPFLR). This event will help increase understanding in three key areas where FLR can make significant contributions: climate mitigation and adaptation, job creation, and reducing threats to biodiversity. It will also provide an opportunity to showcase the role of partnerships and collaboration in successful FLR.

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5th AFR100 Annual Partnership Meeting

AFR100 Focal Points and partners will participate in the 2021 AFR100 Annual Partnership Meeting in-person in Kigali, Rwanda and through an online interactive platform. Building up to the launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the meeting will aim to scale up restoration across the alliance’s 30 member countries.

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