Description
The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) is the world's largest knowledge-led platform on integrated land use, dedicated to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement. The Forum takes an holistic approach to create sustainable landscapes that are productive, prosperous, equitable and resilient. It considers five cohesive themes of food and livelihood initiatives, landscape restoration, rights, finance and measuring progress. It is led by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), in collaboration with its co-founders the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank and Charter Members.
Support from the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) contributes to the management of the GLF secretariat, organizing events, the landscape academy and much more.
In 2020 the project expanded to include a focus on the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The consortium focuses on the groundwork necessary for a successful launch for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration in 2021.
The project has been granted with the extension to 2023 in which GLF partnership has made a strategic decision to focus in catalyzing action at the landscape level. As the GLF transitions to an action-oriented strategy, in this extension, GLF provides an avenue to crystallize five transformative innovations for sustainable landscapes and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. These involve the following: 1) creating what Elinor Ostrom and Charlotte Hess called a digital “knowledge commons” (with the GLF having reached a billion people in more than 185 countries); 2) pioneering youth leadership (60,000 people in 160 countries); 3) GLF knowledge and learning through its Landscape Academy (currently 18,000 learners enrolled); 4) GLF Investment Case on sustainable finance and value chains; and 5) the GLFx initiative to create community-led chapters for restoration at the landscape level and to promote GLF communities of practice.
The project aims to position the GLF as a regional accelerator of best practices through the development of a five-year strategy and theory of change with the following goals: 1. Connect the GLF global movement to regional action (establishing satellite offices, regional youth, learning and finance programs) 2. Mobilize knowledge and learnings on Forest and Landscape Restoration and Ecosystem-based Adaptation to accelerate action (organizing a workshop series with IKI-funded projects, conceptualizing a knowledge commons, designing a restoration education program) 3. Build an institutional ecosystem to launch local champions (establishing community-led GLF chapters, young restoration stewards, exploring financial mechanisms for small scale actors).
The project activities will be collaborative, building on and through partnerships with a focus on the Central America and Africa regions.
