Connections between food, livelihoods, and landscape restoration highlighted at Global Landscapes Forum

20/12/2017

FAO is highlighting the connection between food and livelihood security, with forest and landscape restoration work during the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) this week.

Participants at the annual event are discussing integrated landscape approaches, which can contribute to greater food and nutrition security as well as more resilient livelihoods while delivering on economic growth, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. These efforts will benefit millions of people worldwide.

They’re also reviewing how the impact of landscape approaches could be enhanced through innovative financing mechanisms, cross-sectoral policy processes and platforms, as well as work designed to strengthen the capacity of smallholders, producers and local governments.

A work plan to achieve those goals had previously been set out in a collaborative roadmap for monitoring Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) of degraded lands. Landscape degradation poses serious challenges to eliminating poverty and hunger, maintaining biodiversity, and to the ability of farmers and local communities to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Restoration work contributes to meeting a number of targets, including: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); the Aichi Biodiversity targets, which are to be achieved by 2020; the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) targets set under the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD); as well as the Bonn Challenge. The latter is a global effort aimed at bringing 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2020, and 350 million hectares by 2030.

FAO’s delegation to the GLF, which ended Wednesday, was led by Hiroto Mitsugi, Assistant Director-General of FAO Forestry Department, and included FAO specialists from Forest and Landscape Restoration Mechanism, Forest and Farm Facility, and Land and Water, reflecting FAO’s commitment to sustainability across land uses.

Discussions also began during the GLF on developing a new common framework to support implementation of an integrated approach to landscape restoration, to better support greater food security and nutrition, and more resilient livelihoods.