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.
As the 29th Conference of the Parties to the landmark UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) whirs into gear, the role of forests and trees in mitigating both anthropogenic climate change and its most disastrous impacts – and helping people and ecosystems adapt to the changes that are already happening – is more critical than ever.
CIFOR-ICRAF’s diverse international team of researchers and practitioners has worked on forest and climate policies for over 15 years, including through its Global Comparative Study on REDD+. This team also has its ‘ear to the ground’ in many of the locations worst hit by the climate crisis. As the clock ticks and the challenges multiply, we’re carrying out cutting-edge research to inform the implementation of climate action, and advocating for greater ambitions – and finance – in this arena.
On the frontlines to learn all we can about how forests and trees might help us to mitigate and adapt – and how we can best catalyze, support, and sustain action to protect and restore them into the future.
Join our experts in Baku, Azerbaijan, or online to hear the latest on forests and trees at UNFCCC COP-29!
The 10th Annual Meeting will take place in Rome, Italy from October 3-7. The opening reception will be held on the 3rd, parallel sessions and plenary events will be held on the 4th, 5th and 6th, and optional workshops on the 7th. As FLARE celebrates its 10th Anniversary, we will assess the past while looking to the future of forests and livelihoods, as we invite reflections on the theme of the event, “Imagination and Innovation.”
Other sub-themes include forest landscape restoration: challenges and opportunities,
social justice in the forest: Rights, power, and collaboration, and data and methods for understanding forests and human well-being.
Agricultural, land use and food system development practitioners are increasingly seeking to mainstream climate change adaptation into their sectoral policies, programs and projects. The Climate Risk Planning & Managing Tool for Development Programmes in Agri-Food Systems (CRISP) aims at supporting this endeavor. CRISP is a free, quick and simple to use, interactive web-based tool that guides users through a process to understand climate related risks of specific agricultural systems, articulate science-based adaptation hypotheses, identify cascading impacts and review relevant adaptation options.
CRISP has been developed in collaboration with the GIZ by the Alliance of Bioversity International, the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), and Eurac Research, commissioned by BMZ. Following up of the virtual launching event held in October 2023 attended by over 140 participants from a variety of institutions, including IISD, BMGF, IFPRI, World Bank, Catholic Relief Services, Free University of Bozen, Mitigation Action Facility, Welthungerhilfe, CIMMYT, Mercy Corps, and Adapt 40, we aim to organize a Knowledge Sharing Event focused on providing Practical Guidance on plausible CRISP applications to a wide range of practitioners and experts.
In this conversation, Small Giants Academy’s Head of Programs Tamsin Jones will be talking with the CEO of the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) Éliane Ubalijoro, delving into the ways we can find agency within complexity.
Inspired by the ecological dynamics of nature-based systems, they will discuss how we can break out of our islands of knowledge and embrace collective wisdom. Together, they will touch on how we feed the world, sustainable living within planetary boundaries, and reshaping the relationship between biodiversity and human health.
We will host this virtual community gathering on the topic ‘Rewilding Gardens: Bringing nature home’ on Wednesday, May 17th at 5:00PM CET/4:00PM BST/8:00AM PDT. The duration of the event will be of 90 minutes.
The Rewilding Community of Practice aims to build a network of rewilding enthusiasts and professionals who can exchange ideas and information to help build a better world.
This is a fantastic opportunity for budding and more experienced rewilders to learn more about creating beautiful, resilient gardens – and how to attract bees and other insects – from four experienced practitioners who take different approaches to but all share a passion for creating wild gardens in which biodiversity is thriving .
We hope you will join us in our effort to scale our collective impact and rewild our planet!
The Speakers
Chris d’Agorne (How to Rewild), Brandy Williams (Garden Butterfly), Wankja Ferguson (Vlinder er Bij Natuurtuin), Eva Makandi (Light On A Hill)
Chris d’Agorne, Founder of How to Rewild
Chris is the Communications Lead at Ecosulis, which works to deliver nature-positive solutions for partners such as the Wildlife Trusts, Environment Agency, and Severn Trent Water. Chris comes from a family of ecologists and has a mosaic of experience across wildlife TV production, genetic research, teaching, photography and web design. They founded howtorewild.co.uk in 2021, a website that guides landowners through rewilding projects and has since applied this rewilding theory on a 3.5-acre field in Somerset. Chris continues to share insights from scientific articles and practical experience for Ecosulis and How to Rewild.
Brandy Williams, Founder of Garden Butterfly
Brandy Williams founded Garden Butterfly, a boutique landscape company focused on creating small-scale and highly-curated ecologically friendly gardens and pollinator habitats in the Los Angeleas area. Brandy’s creations include botanically diverse succulent, native and drought-tolerant mosaics for residential and commercial landscapes. Her work blends horticultural expertise with an artist’s eye to create permanent gardens and bespoke installations. Featured on LA Times, KCRW, KTLA and the Theodore Payne Foundation Native Plant Garden Tour, Garden Butterfly is on a mission to show Los Angeles that it can be a more beautiful, environmental and pollinator-friendly city.
Wankja Ferguson, Founder of Vlinder er Bij Natuurtuin
A landscape ecologist by training, Wankja has over 30 years of experience in ecological design, planting, and general nature conservation work. For the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) she worked on projects in nature conservation in her home country the Netherlands and places such as Kenya and Chili. She now heads Vlinder er Bij Natuurtuin, a design and ecological gardening firm focusing on animal-friendly gardens. Wankja focuses on creating garden environments honouring the relationships between plants and wildlife such as bee-friendly gardens lush with edible wild plants.
Eva Makandi, Founder of Light On A Hill
Eva Makandi is a community developer and peacebuilder and holds a BSC in community development. She is the founder of the Light On A Hill (LOAH), a community-based organization focusing on environmental conservation/restoration, as well as on education and talent development. She was named a 2022 Global Landscapes Forum Restoration Steward and is a 30 under 30 class of 2022 fellow of the North American Association of Environmental Education (NAAEE).
Wild Garden: Featured project of Katie van Munster – one of the Rewilding Community of Practice members – and presented by Wild Garden members Lori Eich and Kelsey Kaszas
Wild Garden is a tool that helps everyday people transform their gardens into something both wild and beautiful, full of native plants and wildlife. They aim to enhance the world’s biodiversity, one garden at a time.
Following the speakers’ conversation, there will be time for questions from the audience. The event will be a participatory event taking place on Zoom. The Zoom link to join the event will be shared with all ticket holders via email on the day of the event.
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.
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.
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.
During this webinar, the Rainforest Alliance will present its new strategy for coffee sector transformation and explain how this is linked to the overall ambition of our new certification system and other intervention areas.
