The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF) guides actions worldwide to preserve and protect nature. It was adopted by the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD) in December of 2022. This October, at the CBD’s 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) in Cali, Colombia, parties will review the framework’s implementation to date, take stock of each country’s revised and updated National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), further develop its monitoring framework, and mobilize more resources towards this cause.

Under the GBF, the CBD for the first time recognizes the importance of managed lands’ – including agricultural and urban areas’ – contribution to biodiversity conservation and restoration. For the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), such recognition is timely. We have decades of experience working with land users across the Global South to meet climate, biodiversity, economic, and social goals simultaneously, through holistic approaches like agroforestry, sustainable wildlife management, and planting more trees on farms. We’re also deeply committed to protecting the planet’s remaining primary forests, which play particular roles within the biosphere and serve to maximize ecosystem services. We look forward to contributing our expertise to this critical global dialogue, and helping support our partners to reach their biodiversity targets across a range of landscapes, from forests to agriculture.

Explore the agenda.

Join the Bioregions Facility and FIRE-RES on 23 October at 15:00 CEST, where three innovators will present solutions that efficiently and effectively address wildfire risk and integrated fire management in Europe and beyond.

Our planet’s drylands don’t have the lush abundance of a rainforest, but they’re quietly teeming with species that have evolved to handle their extremes, and providing homes, food, and livelihoods for billions of people, too. Yet these ecosystems are also particularly vulnerable to disruption and desertification—and such changes can be permanent.

The UN passed its Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in 1994; to this day, it’s the sole legally binding international agreement linking environment and development to sustainable land management.

Thirty years on, the UNCCD will gather in December of 2024 to reflect on the progress made so far—and the challenges that lie ahead – under the three focus areas of land restoration; women’s land rights; and land at the heart of the SDGs. As a global centre of excellence for soil and land restoration, integrated soil information, and soil organic carbon accounting, CIFOR-ICRAF will have a powerful presence at UNCCD COP16.

Join us in Riyadh or online to be part of this critical global conversation.