Key Messages

• Holistic Framework: Territorial approaches foster coherent governance by integrating social, environmental, and economic dimensions.
• Inclusive Development: These approaches address inequalities, prioritizing women, youth, indigenous peoples, and marginalized communities.
• Resilience and Sustainability: They support sustainable food systems, climate adaptation, and biodiversity protection.
• Lessons Learned: The updated 2023 White Paper builds on key milestones since 2018, offering actionable recommendations for policymakers, donors, and practitioners.
• Global Importance: Territorial approaches are essential for bridging rural-urban divides and aligning local actions with global SDG ambitions.

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• Forest-based adaptation is a versatile strategy to enhance climate resilience through various actions
• It can address gaps in climate adaptation, aligning with Sustainable Development Goals
• The paper outlines ten actionable principles to effectively utilize forests in adaptation, with real-world examples

Forests are key to climate resilience

Forest-based adaptation is an ensemble of climate actions that employ forests and trees in support of climate change adaptation and resilience, including sustainable forest management, forest conservation and restoration, reforestation and afforestation. Forest-based adaptation can help address the gaps between current adaptation actions and the adaptation needed for reducing climate-related risks and impacts, while contributing to most of the Sustainable Development Goals and promoting strong synergies with mitigation.

This FAO technical paper unpacks the concept of forest-based adaptation and describes policy spheres that could bolster the role of forests and trees in providing adaptation and resilience benefits. It introduces a set of ten principles for using forests and trees to promote transformational adaptation, which were developed with leading experts from the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) and other partners. It describes the policy implications of each principle and draws on examples from diverse forest ecosystems and management practices to illustrate their application in practice.

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The power of food systems

In September 2021, global representatives gathered for the Food Systems Summit, in the hopes of figuring out the future of food. Five major Action Areas were formulated, each supported by multi-stakeholder commitments around food consumption and food production, including the Food is Never Waste initiative, the Healthy Diets Initiative, the Agroecology Initiative, and the Local Food Supply Alliance.

These Action Areas align with the findings of the much-quoted EAT-Lancet Commission report on Food, Planet, Health, a global study that explored the question of how to feed a future population of 10 billion people on a healthy diet and within planetary boundaries. The report concluded that doing so is possible, but only by radically transforming our eating habits, improving food production, and reducing food waste.

About The Future of Food plenary

The global food system is broken – it is unsustainable, unhealthy, unjust, and in dire need of transformation. Our food systems contribute to climate change, biodiversity loss, unhealthy diets, hunger, and social inequality. There is a need for fundamental changes to the way our food is grown, processed, distributed, and consumed.

This aspiration is at the heart of the shift from the old agricultural productivity paradigm toward food systems, in line with the concept of planetary boundaries and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But what does transformation really mean? And what do transformative pathways look like? And how can sustainable transformation be implemented in a just way?

This plenary explores the following questions: which actions are required to launch such radical food system transformation? What constitutes a healthy diet, from a sustainable food system perspective? And who has to lead this change?

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Changing that narrative was a goal of the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) digital conference: GLF Africa 2021: Restoring Africa’s Drylands, Accelerating Action On the Ground. Held on the 2-3 June 2021, the conference brought over 7,000 registrants – including 6000 African nationals – together to debunk old myths, and celebrate the abundance, diversity and potential that Africa’s drylands have to offer.

The event reached over 32 million people on social media, and provided a crucial platform for 223 speakers – including 108 women and 35 youth – to share knowledge, shape policy and galvanize global support for Africa’s drylands ahead of the launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.

A compilation of insight from all those involved, this Outcome Statement summarizes the conference’s key messages, and contains quotes from across the 47 sessions that took place.

Changer ce discours était l’un des objectifs de la conférence numérique du Forum Mondial des Paysages (GLF) « Restaurer les zones arides d’Afrique : Accélérer l’action sur le terrain ». L’évènement, qui s’est tenu les 2 et 3 juin 2021, a été l’occasion de réunir des milliers de personnes du continent africain pour démystifier les vieux mythes et célébrer l’abondance, la diversité et le potentiel que les zones arides d’Afrique ont à offrir.

Les écosystèmes des zones arides couvrent environ 43 % de l’Afrique (en dehors des déserts). Ces zones abritent certaines des espèces animales et de végétales les plus célèbres d’Afrique, et produisent une grande partie d’aliments du continent. Mais trop souvent, le discours appliqué aux zones arides africaines est celui de la pénurie et de la négligence.

GLF Afrique a touché plus de 32 millions de personnes via les réseaux sociaux et a fourni une plateforme essentielle pour 223 intervenant∙e∙s (dont 129 personnes originaires d’Afrique,108 femmes et 35 jeunes) pour partager leur connaissance, façonner les politiques et galvaniser un soutien mondial pour les zones arides d’Afrique avant le lancement de la Décennie des Nations Unies pour la restauration des écosystèmes 2021-2030.

Cette Déclaration Finale est une compilation des idées de toutes les personnes impliquées dans, et résume les messages clés de la conférence à travers des citations issues des 47 sessions qui ont eu lieu.

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Rangelands occupy one-third of all land on earth, are home to important biodiversity, support more than 2 billion people, and contribute significantly to the SDGs. Despite their importance, rangelands remain characterized by chronic underinvestment and high degradation.

This session builds on the ongoing global rangeland dialogue between UNCCD member countries, NGOs/IGOs, and rangeland local users, and explores the role of partnerships – governments, local communities, the private-sector – in scaling up rangeland restoration. On-the-ground impacts are showcased from countries in Africa to spotlight the role and centrality of women and youth in achieving global restoration ambitions.

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Key to the success of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration will be its governance; how can a supportive policy environment be built in Africa that is coherent across sectors and scales? What role do local and national governments play? How do citizens and private companies fit in? What role does the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement play, and what will it mean for dryland restoration in the region?

Join leading representatives of the United Nations Development Programme, G20 Presidency, African Ministers, private sector and youth as they discuss these questions, and close GLF Africa 2021: Accelerating Action on the Ground with a fervent call for a policy agenda to shape the UN Decade from the start.

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The divide is particularly severe when it comes to restoring degraded land. We know that restoring land can boost crop yields and income for farmers, improve access to water, enable people to stay on their ancestral land, and help communities adapt to the changing climate. But with so many competing uses of the land, it is difficult to focus restoration efforts where they can help communities most effectively overcome climate change and rural poverty, while also halting deforestation and protecting vital biodiversity.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and World Resources Institute (WRI) have created a new guide, The Road to Restoration, to help governments, businesses, communities and anyone actively restoring land identify priorities and set up goals grounded in reality. Using real data, they can create systems that support and keep track of their efforts. By measuring progress, countries like El Salvador, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Malawi have followed the road to restoration to craft customized and implementable strategies to fight climate change and rural poverty.

The tool guides users through basic questions about the process to restore land: Why is restoration needed in the first place? What will the restored land be used for? What are the barriers that could prevent sustainability (including drivers of degradation and enabling factors)? What are the constraints and priorities for monitoring restoration?

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