Where indigenous peoples and local communities hold secure rights, forests are less likely to be degraded or destroyed, providing better protection than even legally protected areas. However, in many countries, there is a substantial gap in tenure security for community lands.
To highlight recent solutions for closing the implementation gap, GLF is teaming up with its newest charter member Climate Focus, to offer a Digital Summit on the role of forest rights. Speakers will share recent research findings and their own experience. Particularly, research from the LandMark initiative, which shed light on the nature of the implementation gaps in 14 countries and research from IIED, which tracked progress on empowering forest-linked communities.
Join us to learn how we work together to secure rights to protect landscapes and empower local communities to ensure healthy landscapes.
Speakers:
Moderator: Ingrid Schulte, Land use consultant and NYDF Assessment coordinator, Climate Focus
Fabrice Dubertret, World Resources Institute/LandMark
James Mayers, Director, Natural Resources, International Institute for Environment and Development
Hindou Oumar Ibrahim, Association of Indigenous Peul Women and Peoples of Chad (AFPAT)
Objectives:
Highlight the role of rights in healthy landscapes
Present high-level findings on the area of legally recognized and documented community land
Discuss implications for spurring progress toward full legal recognition
Showcase current progress towards empowering forest-linked communities and the mechanisms to do so
Local landscape initiatives make business sense: companies stand to gain an edge in innovation through supporting local communities and smallholders by utilizing the tacit knowledge of front-line employees. But how can we create environments that better connect financial instruments and ground level landscape initiatives?
Join us on July 9th at 14:00 Central European Time (Paris, Rome), where we will bring together diverse perspectives on what inclusive finance means and how it may be mobilized. This Digital Summit, organized by the the CGIAR Research program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), will feature speakers like Pauline Nantongo of Ecotrust in Uganda, Marco Boscolo from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and Juan Carlos Gonzalez Aybar of Althelia Funds and impact investment manager from Mirova. Speakers will share their experiences and thoughts on the way forward for the upscaling of innovative finance mechanisms that support sustainable landscapes and have special consideration for the smallholders within that landscape.
This Digital Summit emerges from the context of a workstream on inclusive finance initiated within the framework of the FTA, Tropenbos International and CIFOR. This workstream included eight interviews with key stakeholders of the finance value chain and a summary of existing documentation on the topic. This learning journey is now entering a consultative and interactive phase.
Share your thoughts on finance for inclusive and sustainable landscapes with experts on the topic by registering today.
The SDGs call for equal access and rights to land and other productive resources. For decades, efforts to establish, clarify and strengthen rights to land and resources have been central to endeavors towards improving rural livelihoods and advancing sustainable use of natural resources. However, progress has been slow and livelihood and resource impacts variable. In this context this event will discuss the following interlinked questions from different perspectives:
1) What is the evidence on the links between rights/tenure and sustainable landscapes?
2) Why has progress in clarifying and strengthening customary and local community rights been so slow?
3) What are the most promising approaches/options/tools to move forward?
We offer speed networking as a facilitated process during the conference break times to provide a friendly space for participants to meet new people, make connections and share interests and ideas in a short space of time. These sessions will last 30 minutes and operate on a first-come, first-served basis. Ask our volunteer team for details on the location, and don’t miss this opportunity to network with like-minded, inspiring people.
Around the world, there is strong evidence that integrated approaches to landscape management deliver a multitude of economic, livelihoods and environmental benefits. However, despite the recommended spread of such approaches the fact remains that the alarming degradation of our biosphere continues apace.
This interactive session will bring together impact investors, senior executives from regeneration financing businesses, representatives of think tanks and the European Commission, and interested parties to analyze this seeming paradox – success of integrated approaches in terms of their biophysical and social outcomes, but lacking support in investment and governance spaces – and to identify options for overcoming these gaps.
It will start with a short, inspirational review of the existing evidence for the success of landscape approaches in given tropical, temperate and boreal regions.
This will be followed by a lightning talk discussing the many reasons for the seeming inability of the world to embrace these approaches. These include:
general inertia against change that requires collaboration across sectors
massive pathway dependencies in both public and private organizations
diverse mindsets and incentive systems in public, private and civil society organizations
inability by private and public leaders to recognize market and socioeconomic trends that favor large-scale changes
lack of agroecological expertise and competences of key staff in the Ministries of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment or agri-food companies
investors who pay lip service to green and social performances while primarily seeking to maximize financial returns
NGOs competing for scarce short-term funding, rather than pursuing long-term strategies
Ageing farmers in the Global North and South who seek to meet critical short-term needs
This talk will serve as an introduction to the presentations of astonishing success and unbelievable failure that will follow. These short talks will bring together practitioners that will play tag between those who have succeeded and are identifying the factors of success and those who have failed and have identified reasons for failure. This will be followed by a panel discussion that will involve players and innovators whose job will be to explore the solution space and to suggest ways in which to overcome the challenges identified in the lighting talk.
The event will conclude with a wrap-up of the problems and the potential solutions identified, and participants will be asked to express their insights, questions, hopes and fears using Slido.
The rapid pace of global environmental change has sparked unprecedented interest and actions to restore and conserve the world’s lands, forests, freshwater systems, and to finding ways to promote their sustainable use and management. In parallel, there is growing recognition that most of the world’s remaining natural and mosaic landscapes are in fact owned or customarily managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities, with women playing a critical role. Their persistent struggles and actions to protect and manage their land, territories and resources in sustainable and holistic ways have, in recent years, led to the development of a growing body of social and environmental safeguards and standards to protect their rights. While encouraging, the response to date has largely been uncoordinated. Absent from existing frameworks and certification schemes is a common set of globally recognized principles, defined and developed with Indigenous Peoples and local communities, including women, that upholds and protects their rights and contributions as stewards of the world’s natural and mosaic landscapes. Consistent with the key objectives of the 2019 GLF, the purpose of this Interaction Session is to launch a new global effort to develop best practice ‘Guiding Principles to Rights-Based Approaches to sustainable landscapes” to both inform national and international policies and landscape-level interventions, and clearly position Indigenous Peoples and local communities, including women, at the forefront of global conservation and climate action. Key to achieving such outcomes is the need for unifying principles that emphasise inclusive aspirational goals and targets, as opposed to minimum-based standards that do little more than mitigate short term risks. Drawing on lessons learned from some of the most advanced rights-based approaches to conservation and land/resource governance in the world today, the session will feature a high-level discussion between Indigenous leaders, rights-based organisations and key climate, conservation and development institutions on strategies and opportunities for rethinking rights-based standards and safeguards to:
Strengthen respect, recognition and protection of the rights Indigenous Peoples and local com-munities, including women;
Bring an end to the criminalization and persecution of land and environment defenders;
Increase recognition of, and sustained support to, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, including women, as stewards and bearers of solutions to landscape restoration, conservation and sustainable use;
Build partnership at different levels (local to global) to enhance engagement and support for rights-based approaches to sustainable landscapes across scales and sectors; and
Dramatically scale-up efforts to legally recognize and secure collective land and resource rights across landscapes.
Led by the Global Landscape Forum (GLF), the Indigenous Peoples Major Group (IPMG) and the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), the session will set the pace for the development of aspira-tional standards and principles that can pave the way for a more sustainable, equitable, and just future for all. The leaders of this initiative believe strongly that the eventual adoption of such “gold standards” by the GLF, its Charter Members, donors, and other international institutions and initia-tives—including private sector investors and companies—will create a positive wave, and encour-age others to improve their own standards, certification systems and commitments over time.
We have chosen CO2 as the primary measure for nearly everything related to the climate crisis from pollution to solution. What do we gain? Better communication and easier reporting of success and failure. What do we lose? An opportunity to utilize a holistic approach to tackle a complex issue, often resulting in crucial topics such as biodiversity being left behind.
Take for example, a potential REDD+ project that prioritizes fast-growing tree species for carbon sequestration while potentially sacrificing biodiversity, landscape heterogeneity, ecosystem services, etc. Is carbon and the climate emergency stealing attention from other pressing issues which, when considered more holistically, could also make significant contributions to adaptation and mitigation? Let’s discuss these key questions in this GLF Digital Summit “To carbon or not to carbon.” What other approaches are there to this carbon-centred dilemma?
