Digital edition: Bonn 2020

On 3 and 5 June, a limited number of participants will be able to virtually socialize with other track participants in Measuring Progress Cocktail (or Mocktail) and Coffee Hours using Zoom. We will provide a “conversational menu”, with a selection of questions to guide small group conversations in break out rooms.

At The Rainforest Alliance, we work at the intersection of business, agriculture and forests by bringing diverse allies together. This alliance enables us to make deep-rooted changes on some of our most pressing social and environmental issues. During this session, we will showcase how, together, we protect forests and protected landscapes, improve the livelihoods of farmers and forest communities, while helping them mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis in practical and effective ways.

Materials:

• Innovations in land use
• Deep Demonstations: Landscapes in Carbon Sinks
• Deep Demonstations: Resilient Food Systems and Diets

Links:

• https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/articles/eliminating-deforestation-from-ghana-cocoa-supply-chain
• https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/tags/maya-biosphere-reserve
• https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/articles/community-the-secret-to-stopping-deforestation-in-guatemala
• Video

Main session: Strong alliances for a sustainable future

Time is running out to solve the complex and far-reaching environmental and climate induced challenges facing our planet. Issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and deforestation affect us all, but they differ from one region to another, affecting the most vulnerable especially women in rural areas where agriculture remains the main activity generating income to millions of farmers. This session will be a moment where women, Guardians of the Rainforest, share their experiences on the ground, the challenges they face on a daily basis and the solutions they adopted to mitigate and adapt to the changing environment while trying to preserve their environmental heritage.

Main session: Strong alliances for a sustainable future

Meeting the dietary needs of a growing global population while averting dangerous climate change and safeguarding nature is one of the biggest challenges of our time. This session will feature a presentation on the potential benefits dietary shifts in over 100 countries could have on national-level human and environmental health, and how national dietary guidelines could be optimised to improve planetary health. There will be a panel discussion on how these shifts can be best achieved, with conservation, nutrition and farming experts looking at some of the solutions for a more sustainable and resilient food system.

Main Session: The triple challenge: a stable climate, food security and space for nature

The Triple Challenge raises difficult questions for decision-makers and stakeholders. In particular, how can we encourage scale-up of known solutions, such as reducing food waste, and also resolve remaining trade-offs between climate mitigation, food and biodiversity restoration priorities? To find acceptable and context-specific answers to this question, we need good processes for consideration of complex political, social, economic, cultural and environmental factors and perspectives. The purpose of this session is to help generate recommendations that can support such processes. The session will draw on inputs from different stakeholders – including international organisations, local communities and the private sector – and on ideas from the audience, and will feed into the development of Triple Challenge recommendations and tools.

Presentations:

• The Triple Challenge: Tackling climate-food-biodiversity trade-offs
• From Global to Local Action: Healthy diets from sustainable food systems

Main Session: The triple challenge: a stable climate, food security and space for nature

The COVID-19 pandemic combined with the impact of record fires around the world is showing how connected humans are to nature, its resources and biodiversity. Land use change, including deforestation, is a key driver of emerging infectious diseases. To prevent the next pandemic, it is critical to transform our relationship with nature. This session will present new science on the changing drivers of deforestation and dive into integrated solutions that are needed to ensure human and planetary well-being.

Main Session: The triple challenge: a stable climate, food security and space for nature

Social protection programmes are key to assisting the very poor and vulnerable to cope with income and security shocks caused by droughts. Such programmes can also be instrumental in implementing nature-based solutions for drought prevention; protecting productive assets threatened by droughts including natural capital; and channelling emergency aid into building back better through investments in ecological resilience. This session will bring together scientists, policy makers, donors and conference participants to discuss the implications of global warming and the current COVID-19 crisis for drought risk management, food security and ecological resilience in the rural regions of Africa, and the role of social protection in responding to this ‘double crisis’.

Main session: Drought risk management, natural resource management and social protection: new alliances for sustainability and resilience

Agro-ecosystems in a broad sense, including agriculture, livestock, forestry and fishery, form the basis of livelihoods of rural populations in developing countries. Keeping them healthy is a key ingredient of ecological diversity and stability, human wellbeing and resilience to many risks and disasters including milder forms of drought. The session will start with introducing the concept of Land Degradation Neutrality, a key concept of ecological sustainability on land anchored in the Sustainability Development Goals, and provide examples from research and development which help rural people improve their productive, sustainable and resilience-enhancing use of natural resources.

Main session: Drought risk management, natural resource management and social protection: new alliances for sustainability and resilience

FACILITATED NETWORKING WILL ONLY WORK WHEN TUNING IN FROM THE MOBILE APP.

GLF Bonn 2020 may be a digital event but the screen won’t separate you from the other participants! Through these facilitated networking sessions, you can connect with people across the globe. In this 30-minute session, we will first hear a short introduction by the moderator, and then go into small, break-out ‘rooms’ where you can meet new people every five minutes! The moderator will provide you with information you can use to develop your questions,  in order to make the most of your networking time. Please note that to participate in facilitated networking, you must download the Whova app.

Take advantage of other networking opportunities.

One on One Networking:

Within the Whova app, you receive recommendations concerning network possibilities, based on your profile, and you can view other participants’ backgrounds to select with whom you want to connect.

Group Networking:

Are you interested in fostering conversations among more individuals on a specific topic? Then the Group Networking feature is what you need. It can be activated via the Community button on your dashboard, and it will allow you to:

• Join or create a social group. You can take part in social groups already listed or participate in a social group linked to a specific session. If your topic is not listed, you can initiate your own group, by clicking “add a topic or social group”, and invite people to join.
• If you would like to virtually meet face-to-face, then join or create a meet up! In the Meet-ups & Virtual Meets feature, you can look for active meet-ups, or suggest one yourself. To do so, just click on “Suggest a Meet” and then on “Virtual Meet”; fill out the details of the meeting (time, title, topic) and make sure to let people know about it.