Flagship Innovations for Resilient Landscapes: Restoring Land, Managing Drought and Transforming Food Systems - Action Dome, UNCCD COP17

I Hello, good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
We're just waiting for delegates that have attended earlier sessions to make their way to us.
We will begin in around 5 minutes time, please.
5 minutes time when we will be learning about some amazing flagship innovations that are transforming systems through resilient landscapes and in particular with reference to food system, an essential subject when it comes to food scarcity, but at the same time protecting our landscapes.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience.
We begin in 5 minutes time.
Thank you.
Thank Good morning.
Good, good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
It's lovely to have you with us here in the action dome.
We are about to begin our session, and that is looking at flagship innovations to create resilient landscapes within the context of creating strong, productive food systems.
We're going to hear about some fascinating innovations that people are implementing, they've created.
On the ground across various parts of the world.
I just want to begin with a quick poll in the room.
If I was to say to you, restore land, what word immediately pops up? I'd like to see some arms pop up in the air, if I could, please.
What does restore land mean to you? Don't be shy.
There is no wrong answer.
Yes, thank you.
Community.
Thank you, community.
Any others? What does restore land mean to you? Urgency.
Community urgency.
I need one more, please.
I can't believe the only artwork I can believe, no male arms are in the air.
The ladies are leading the way this morning.
Yes.
Hey ecosystem.
Fabulous.
Can I have a gentleman, please? Let me come back.
I've got two gentlemen.
Hope, hope.
Hope.
Love it, love it.
One more.
Local livelihoods.
Fabulous.
The point there that I was trying to make is that there is no one answer.
It's essentially all about teamwork and different elements that come together to create the one working, successful whole.
That is what we are going to be looking at today, the different parts of the system.
And the way I plan for today to work, it's going to be a fairly pacey session.
We are hoping to get or having enough time to get the most out of our innovators, our guests today.
So each guest, this is what to expect.
Each guest has brought an innovation, one innovation, one slide, one image, and that image is going to tell the story.
How's that for a challenge and they're against the clock as well.
So it's not like one of those ministerials where they go on for 15 minutes and you can't interrupt.
We are timing them to tell their story.
It's almost a sell to an innovator.
If you can't sell your idea within a short space of time, you don't know You don't know your product.
That's essentially what is going to happen today.
Each story hopefully is going to answer a number of questions.
What changed with your innovation? Who currently benefits? What does the evidence tell us? Crucially, what would it take to move from a wonderful story and an interesting talking point to country level to scale it up and something that investors would buy into because this is where a lot of these pilots are falling down.
That's what we're aiming to do today.
We're going to hear about rangelands, we're going to hear about land health data, incentives for farmers, the smarter use of water, the rules, the finance behind restoration, women led seed systems, and hopefully also sustainable products that have been designed around what farmers and future consumers need.
Three different parts of one story.
Let us begin.
To set the scene for us, I'd like to welcome to the stage to open our discussion.
Lucged Desta, director of CGIR's multifunctional Landscape Science Program.
Lucged works at the heart of today's challenge, and that is how we restore land, whilst also supporting food, water, biodiversity, and the people whose lives depend on all of this, particularly their landscape.
Lucigd, thank you very much indeed.
Let me get you your microphone.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Good morning, colleagues.
I'm Roza Tamana as you introduced already.
I work with the CJR.
I'm leading the multifunctional Landscape Science Program, one of the science programs and accelerators created a few weeks ago.
Once again, I want to welcome our guests, government representatives, UN CCD colleagues, donors, researchers, practitioners, community leaders, and all of you and panelists as well.
I will briefly outline what we expect in this session.
Generally, as mentioned already, we have a huge problem of land degradation.
There is a new study, not very new, which highlights that we are consuming our quota of the Earth's resources, finish our budget by July and August.
That means we are over utilizing, we are borrowing a lot of resources from the land already.
This will be very complicated even under climate change, under drought, and population pressure.
That means we have to do quick, we have to act rapid, and we have to apply relevant technologies to address those big challenges.
As we know, the challenges are complicated because there are many drivers, many actors, and there are interactions and so on.
That means we need systems approach at landscape scale where those interactions are mostly revealed.
Then the technologies are already available.
I think we know more or less that there are several solutions that are implemented by different partners and governments and countries and all actors which are very essential and bringing huge change.
For example, even today, there will be some sessions on rangelands, on water, on irrigation, advisory systems, and also on policies, on finance, and so on.
Those will indicate which solutions are available and how they are functioning.
What is important is those solutions in general are not well organized, they are dismantled or they are in different places.
So we need to have a way of bringing those together in a compendium or a catalog similar to what we have in workout because by bringing those different solutions that we can address the complex issues at the landscape level.
So today in the discussion, we will hear from the different partners, but also we will learn how those can be customized to other locations.
Another important point to make is also that knowledge is not only from the scientists, but also from other practitioners.
We have the farmers, the young, the women, indigenous people have a lot of knowledge for a very long time that we can capitalize and tap in.
We have also integrate those into our basket of solutions.
And another important point also, because we are addressing systematic issues, we need to also bundle those solutions.
One solution may not address the complex issues that we have.
So bundling is key, and bundling should be systematic.
I think the bundling is becoming a bit of a buzzword by everyone, but I think we have to be very systematic in what we bundle and why we bundle.
It has to be intentional, it has to be systematic, and it has to be customized for situations that really are suitable to be necessary to be targeted.
And then we have three things to outline.
Number one, what we want to do is we want to inventory the solutions we have that are useful, that are scalable, and that are important.
And number two, we try to discuss on how bundling can be done, integration systematically.
And the third is what partnership should we have to put those things in place for policy influence, for scaling and implementation.
And two final things.
Number one, I think we have to make sure that we avail useful, necessary, customized solutions for countries to use so that we move from strategic from planning into implementation.
So far, the countries have a lot of commitment and it's up to us to support them, actionate those, and advance their commitments.
The second one is to make sure that We scale the package.
We should not scale a single technology or an element.
Sometimes we just say a black box, this is what we have.
I think that's not a complete set.
We have to scale the knowledge, the capability, the framework, and the whole package so that it is more usable for partners and users.
We have to shift, share the knowledge, not just this piece of technology that we have.
I think this is all from my side.
Thank you so much.
I will have a very nice discussion.
This again, thank you very much indeed.
There you heard the priorities and the challenge.
I'll take that from you.
Wonderful.
Thank you very much indeed.
We're going to begin first of six innovators.
We're going to begin with an area of land, a landscape that is often described as empty.
It actually supports people, it supports livestock, it supports wildlife, entire economies.
We are currently smack bang in the middle of one, and that is the rangelands.
To talk us through this, please, Fiona Finton is a senior scientist at Il Ram and leads the Stellar Rangeland Restoration Investment Hub and Fiona focuses on the deceptively difficult question, how on earth do you restore rangelands with the people who use them and make that work investable? How do you make it appealing without losing what matters locally? Fiona, the stage is yours, please.
Thank you.
Let me get a microphone.
I'm hoping we have your image.
Here it is.
Please talk us through your image Fiona.
Okay.
Yes, range s.
I work on range s at different degrees from community up to policy and also influencing global dialogue and international years, et cetera.
One thing that has really been coming up and I think we've heard it so many times here at the COP is that we know ranges or many range s need restoring.
We know finance is out there for restoration, but how do we bring in, I don't like the word unlock, but how do we harness, bring in access that financing for restoration on the ground? This is what the stellar, the sustainable, large scale, sustainable sustainable large scale range lift restoration Investment Hub is trying to do.
It's basically funded by Jeff.
It's come out as a legacy product of a Jeff funded project through IUCN executed by IUCN, implemented by Uri and CGIR partners, including ECATA, the Alliance for Diversity and SATs and aircraft, and we've realized that there is this gap.
And what the hub is trying to do is to develop investment cases with producers on the ground or companies on the ground who have good practice are doing small scale arrange and restoration or have an idea and want to scale that up.
And we work with them to help them develop that business investment case.
We help them to think through a little bit more about how to present their idea in a manner that will attract a business or a company or a financer to invest in that.
We're basically starting by producing these investment briefs.
We are then working with investors getting to know what different investors want to see what their needs are, what the priorities are, and try and match make the investor with the investment case.
At the same time, we're offering support both to the investment case, the producer, but also trying to influence the thinking of the investors, the financers to say, what are the extra things, the particular characteristics of range les that you need to think about as an investor to ensure that your investment is going to be beneficial to all stakeholders and particularly the communities.
Because as we know, there are some particular characteristics like co tenure security, mobility, collective governance.
All these things are very different things that investors may not be aware of and need to have some guidance on how to make their investment a good investment.
This is our investment hub.
We will be launching it tomorrow Saturday the 22nd in MET 011 at 6:00 P.M.
Come and see more there.
Thank you very much.
Fi, before you sit down, am I right in understanding that you've already secured half $1 million of investment? Is that figure correct? We've influenced indirectly, but I wouldn't say we've secured.
But we're getting there.
We've got a lot of investment cases.
You just listed some of the points that investors need convincing about.
What is the number one question that investor will ask an innovator? Um, it depends on the investor and what their objectives are.
A lot of these investments, it may be a fashion company that has a particular interest in a particular product such as Cashmere and is wanting to invest in improving the quality of that product, but also to support communities and the environment.
The question would be, what's the most efficient and effective way of Mm hmm.
That value chain, working through that value chain to then realize an investment that also benefits environments and the community.
Whereas you might have a very business oriented investor who's purely interested in the bottom line.
And so their question will be what profits can I take out of this investment whilst also contributing to communities and the environment? Okay, Fiona, thank you very much indeed.
I'm going to ask you to stay on the stage, a round of applause, please.
If you could stay on the stage.
Yeah, thank you.
All right.
Let's move on to our next innovator.
The next innovation is asking the question of how we can see change sooner or rather, hopefully, presenting a solution and the reward of the people delivering it as well.
Henry Ruf is the Director for Climate Action and the principal Scientist at the Alliance of Biodiversity International at CT and he is essentially taking us through the data and the incentives.
This is what people investors are looking at.
He connects real time or rather near real time land monitoring with practical incentives, paying farmers when restored trees survive and actually deliver results.
Henri, can I have you on the stage, please? The floor is yours.
My question to you as you talk us through your image is, you've actually got two images.
I just want to underline that two innovations, so we're being spoiled today.
If you could just take us through the image we're seeing what we couldn't see before.
You know what's not being shown in that image and how the evidence, you're all about data, of course, how the evidence is used into a fair reward for the farmer.
Let us reveal your first image.
Thank you.
Exactly.
Thanks to you.
You presented it very well, actually.
Basically, we're facing two problems.
One is loss of vegetation, loss of trees that is either due to natural disaster drought or that is human induced.
This is one problem.
The other one is how to deal with it.
This is something that is happening at the farm level where farmers actually do plant trees and potentially get rewarded for that.
This is what I'm presenting today.
It is two products.
The first one is shown on the picture is TI and Terra e is near real time monitoring of vegetation cover using satellite imagery and, Ps are analyzed one after the other to be able to spot where there has been a change in vegetation cover, and that change has to be identified soon enough as for the government to be able to intervene and take action to restore that.
That is something that is already taking place in Peru, Colombia, Honduras, Vietnam, and Ethiopia.
500 people have been trained already, and this is a product that is made available for free for governments to be able to monitor vegetation cover.
Another tool is called My Farm Trees, which is the second image.
I don't know if it's going to appear.
Yeah, this one, exactly.
This is a tool where we are making sure farmers can monitor the trees they plant on their land.
That they can report the growth of the trees, meaning it's not just a picture of a seedling that is being planted, but it's actually a real tree that is surviving and that is growing and that application that runs on their phone is also a way to receive payment for that.
That payment can be a payment that is just for the fact that they do plant trees or it can be any other payment for other ecosystem services available, be it carbon, be it water retention or whatever.
But it's really a tool that is made available for farmers so that they can monitor and report the trees they do plant.
And then this is made available to all kinds of investors that are supporting farmers for their action in planting trees.
So these are two products that we have developed, and the my farm trees has actually been used in Kenya and Cameroon for the plantation of 350,000 trees.
Which seems a lot, but it's not.
There is still need to scale up this product and make it available to more farmers.
I was just going to say, we were just losing you with your microphone.
But thank you very much.
I can't believe you did two innovations in the time of one.
Thank you.
Wonderful.
Just before you sit down, Henri, hang on to your microphone.
Although I'm a news reader, I started off my life a prior incarnation as a GIS, at the very start of GIS.
For my thesis, one of the problems I had was satellite data.
Resolution, pixels, and my dissertation was based on neural nets and classifying land use and vegetation using satellite imagery, et cetera In terms of precision, What does Terra report? What percentage precision does it report? I'm just wondering in terms of safeguards for these smallholder farms, one wrong pixel classification could impact them.
Just talk us through the safeguards that are in place to look after a lot of these small holder farmers.
Yeah.
Yes.
I can't answer you exactly.
What I can tell is that the remote sensing technology now allows you to go at the canopy level and to be able to identify tree from the canopy.
That technology exists.
I'm not sure exactly which one is used by TI.
I suppose it's Sentinel because this is the most recent with the highest resolution possible, but potentially it could be another one.
But the technology now really allows you to identify a tree from the canopy.
Henri, thank you very much indeed.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Let us turn our attention next to H twoO water.
We can't live without it.
Thank you.
Our next image comes from Mosin Hafiz, who works and directs work on water, on food, but also ecosystems at the International Water Management Institute, and he brings together for us practical measures on the land tied in with better information on soil moisture, irrigation and water across the landscape.
Let us reveal your image, Mosin.
And what I'd like to know is making sure I didn't jump it there, I believe you're going to talk about the chameleon soil moisture censor.
How does it tell a farmer how to irrigate, when to irrigate, how much water to use? You have 4 minutes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Let's just switch that.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Good morning, everyone.
Here we are talking about the agriculture and especially when we are looking around the globally, 90% of water used for agriculture sector.
And then in the developing countries of Asia and Africa, globally is around 70%.
One of the biggest challenge that we are facing it all the time, that the inefficiency at the farm scale level at the system scale level is too high.
So much water is being used.
Traditionally, water is coming to the farm either through the irrigation canal or it's a rain fed one that you're using the water from the pond and everyone.
Big question is farmers when to irrigate, how much to irrigate, and what to do.
And that's where there are many tools that are available, and here I'm presenting it about one of the tool, which is a chmloom style master sensor, which is working in a very simplified in the traffic light diagram.
It's telling us when to irrigate.
If you look around that one, these are the two pictures which we have taken In this is Tanzania and is in Pakistan.
You see that within that one, it's a sensor which is installed under the soil.
It's looking around the root zone up to whatever the plant you planted about that one what's the root depth on that one.
It's telling about that one when it is blue, light is indicating that there is too much water.
You don't need to apply the water.
Aditionally farmers, whenever water is available, they want to apply the water to make sure that because they don't have a security next time when water will be available.
So they won't apply water too much.
When it is green, it means that you need to go into the field and you look around at the instrument and saying, Okay, green, it means in three to four days time you need to apply.
And when it is red, that means you need to start planning that water immediately next day.
That's important.
Otherwise the crop health will be impacted.
And the way it's very easy for the farmers could look around on that one, particularly the color coding, which is a very simple, red means they need to apply, they need to start applying the irrigation water.
Green mean is that they have a three days time to start planning it.
They could look around at the house, through that one, the sensors as a part of that one and also going at the ground.
And how that is transforming, we are using those instrument in Tanzania in Ethiopia, as well as also in South Asia in many countries, and we see a lot of improvement around 50% of the water consumption has been reduced, but at the same time, production has gone around 30% to 45% varies from country to country.
And that much the additional water which is saved, production has increased, that could be used for growing other crops or use it for other purposes as a part of that one.
One of the big question which we are doing how that could be upscaled to the next technology because these are the individual available at the farm scale level.
We're utilizing and combining with the remote sensing based satellite imaging and guiding about the irrigation demand forecasting for next seven to eight days and guiding to the farmers as advisory service and saying it, okay, after the next eight days, how much water you need to apply, when do you need to apply, and that's why we are moving it from the farm scale level experimentation, which has been demonstrated very successfully in more than ten country and moving to that one so that we could provide the information to the irrigation department.
The government feature who could be able to have a better management of water allocation at the system scale level? Mason, thank you very much indeed.
Thank you before you disappear.
Yeah.
Fascinating.
We all need to learn how to use water more efficiently.
So looking at the statistics when it comes to agriculture and water use, agriculture users, you will correct me.
This is your field.
As I've come across the data, 70% of freshwater, 70% of our freshwater is consumed by the agricultural sector.
A 90% of it around 90% in South Asia, is that correct? Yeah.
What is the biggest obstacle to adoption of yet another irrigation system? Because if you think, a lot of these farmers have had people saying, this is the way to do it, whereas traditionally they may have used other systems that aren't applicable with our climate and our weather today? What's the biggest obstacle? Is it trust? Is it the tech or the cost of the tech? Found? I think it's a combination of all these things, what you have mentioned.
It's about the awareness.
First thing to the farmers about that one, how the technology is used.
Second thing is on that one, how that could be trained to the training of trainers and adoption by the government, particularly at the water User association at that scale level, that could be upscale as a part of that one.
And one of the fundamental problem come whether the instrument is available at the farm scale level, where the farmers are needed, and who will be financing those kind of instruments, and that's where the private sector need to come and play a role and see how the instruments are available at the local market or the local scale level, wherever there is a demand on that one and how we could utilize on that one.
That's where the real flux of that one.
Technology is there, but technology availability, also that making sure that when the government is owning those sort of things, and third thing is the farmers are able to get the information that port services when they need it at the doorstep.
Son, thank you very much indeed.
Thank you.
You can see how technology matters with this challenge.
However, it doesn't control or rather help with who controls the land, who maintains the work or who pays.
A lot of the time, those are questions for institutions, for public policy, and also for those in power.
So we are now going to look at finance and governance.
Anuja Malholtra is a policy manager at Arie Center for Policy Design.
Anuja works at the meeting point of environmental policy, public finance, and also ecological restoration.
He focus is shared and state land where even a well funded restoration plan can fail, often does if responsibilities and rights are unclear.
Anuja, let us reveal your image.
Here we go.
I'm looking at a lady in a trench.
Talk us through the innovation.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks for that context.
Hi everybody.
I'm Anuja.
I work primarily in India.
My interest and background is in public finance and policy.
One of the questions that really kept me up at night for years was that in a country like India, there's enough public funds that are there.
Even though finance is always talked about as one of the biggest bottlenecks to scaling interventions or looking at land related work, um, there's no dearth of public finance that's available.
Our estimates tell us that the numbers are at least $6 billion per year, but it could also go up to ten to $12 billion per year, which means that funds are flowing towards schemes and interventions related to land, but we don't always know if the interventions are designed and implemented in a way that makes sense for the region that they're in.
This photograph that you see, that's me.
In a trench, and it should also give you a sense of the height of that deep contour that's been built.
Now, this is a very popular intervention in India, which is carried out to enhance the soil and moisture conservation of land and soil.
Now, this is in one of the very dry areas in India.
It's a semi arid landscape, and it's also a grassland, which you can see behind you.
It's a nice, beautiful, contiguous rangeland that is used by pastoral livestock and so on.
But in order to enhance its soil and moisture conservation abilities, it's a popular intervention to carry out these deep trenches.
Now, there's enough knowledge out there that tells you that it doesn't work.
Not only does it not work, it's also harmful for the soil organic carbon in that area.
It has no proven benefits in many of these areas.
However, it's designed centrally and then carried out throughout the country.
So you know how initially we heard just in the context setting that the knowledge is there, the technology is there, the finance is there.
The question always remains, how do you bring all of it together um, um, in a way that makes sense.
What we're trying to do is we're trying to bring together players who normally wouldn't talk to each other.
So people who would write papers on such interventions not working, and even well intended efforts for restoration by the private sector and the government who might not know that what they are doing is actually harmful for the landscape? How do we become the players who bring those that ecosystem together, and we've started some work.
We're working in a few districts now in India, and our goal is not to have a big launch for a new initiative or, you know, anything symbolic, but rather what we're looking at is, how do we use existing knowledge and how do we make it work better in the way that existing finance and policies are working? So that's I think I'll stop there.
Before you sit Anuja, could you answer that question for me? Have you come across any solutions to use existing knowledge better? Could you just elaborate for one moment for us.
Yes.
I'll give you an example.
There's a big land management scheme in India which focused on watershed development under which mechanical interventions are done such as these.
We have been working with the government.
We've presented evidence to them that we don't always need to do very highly intense mechanical interventions.
We can also look at low impact interventions which would actually have a better outcome for people and biodiversity and land of the area.
We've had some early wins.
Some of those ideas have been picked up at least in a couple of places in the country and what we're hoping is that as time passes and we are able to document that that's actually working, we'll be able to replicate it in more and more areas and then scale it up eventually.
Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you.
We're getting to the rules, the hard governance, a lot of the work that goes on behind the scenes.
The next one, all of the innovations are amazing today.
But when it comes to women, we've heard, haven't we that climate change or the fight against climate change will not be successful without the inclusion of women.
And we all know the reason why because it's often women who are so close to the land.
This is one of the training courses that we had to go on at the BBC.
We had to raise the awareness of gender and climate change.
Our next innovation presentation comes from Hilary Rotti who is a Rangeland and restoration practitioner and also the impact lead at Just Digit, supporting community led landscape restoration across East and West Africa.
He's bringing us the story of a women run grass seed bank or banks.
Using locally adapted seed, ready when the rain comes and a source of income and ownership.
Let us reveal your image, Hillary.
So, I need another arm.
I need to be an octopus today, don't I? There is the image.
I think we all recognize the beautiful mountain range in the back.
Talk us through it.
Thank you.
Thank you and good morning.
I Before I talk about cra seed bank, we in just use quite a number of interventions to restore degraded and s.
I'm glad the first two speakers or three, all of them are talking about degradation of Fnland and restoration of these Frenlands.
But the question is, how are we going to restore? The land has been degraded, the topsoil has been washed.
What are we going to do to make sure that we tap the land to where it was? But then we adjust it, we came up with this innovation of grassy bank, working with local pastoral women.
Mostly in East Africa, Kenya and Tanzania.
So what about Creed Bank? We realize that while we are doing restoration, when you talk to pastoral communities, the local pastoralists, they'll tell you, yes, our land is decded, we want to take it back to where it was.
But then the question is, do we have that right crass pieces that was there several years ago so that we can take them rather bring back to the state it was.
Pastoralists mostly prefer or rather would appreciate the preferred species by livestock.
What we do with grass seed punk is that it's not a normal fodder b.
We go back to the old people and ask them ten, 15, or 100 years ago, which kind of grass species was here.
Then they tell us this was the type of grass species which we used to have.
But then to some reason, it disappeared.
So we go back and look for a few cross seeds of that particular cross species, then we multiply using what we call the cross seed bank.
And these are primarily led by women, the Pastoral women.
And we are not only looking at the crass to use for restoration, we're also looking at the livelihoods of those particular women.
So you would find we support the women to produce that particular crass.
Then we as Sarit and other development partners come in and purchase the same cet from the women and use those craset to restore the credit areas.
So this is one of our crass bang in Kenya, next to Mondi Ki, that is Mondi Ki Magaro.
A In a five hectare piece of land, you would find a group of ten women getting up to maybe 9,000 USD per season that is within three months.
In a year, which we have two seasons in Kenya, East Africa, they are talking about 1,800 USD from that particular cred bank.
Thank you so much.
Hillary, thank you very much indeed.
It's great to hear an actual figure put on the work that's being done.
You mentioned that $9,000 being generated for the community in three months.
I actually want to ask you two questions here, if I could.
What is one visible change that is so obvious in a woman's Day or household because of a scheme like this? What have you noticed? Thank you.
You asked of one, but we have several.
I'll give you one.
One key one is the change in livelihood to find in pastoral setups.
Most women, they don't let me use an example to be explicit mas pastoral setup.
Most women don't own businesses.
Most culture don't go beyond maybe primary in those deep rural villages, primary education.
But then with the help of Cradbank, quite a number of them.
They have their own businesses, they run their own businesses, and a group of Crasdbk like this one, the women came together and say, Hey, we are going to sponsor the Pride cult in the community to go to the university.
And as we speak, we have one young lady now studying medicine courtesy of Crasdbank.
Yes.
Okay.
And my second question, wonderful.
What has a gross system got to do with a food system? In ecology, we say an healthy landscape is an improved livelihood.
So when the landscape is healthy, then it means the productivity is high, and it cuts across not only food system, but across health education and all the sectors.
So once you improve the landscape, it automatically impacts positively to the food system.
Yeah.
Hillary, thank you very much indeed.
Please take your seat.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Sustainable products and farmer support.
Everybody needs support.
Our next guest is the communications coordinator for the G 20 Global and Initiative, and she is bringing the UN CCD lens, the support that startups need.
And There are two innovations that we were spoiled with.
We had to choose one.
It was so difficult.
But Wogaki Isnevski is going to talk us through her role and the role of the G 20 Global and Initiative and the work that they do as an institution to support startups.
Waki, thank you very much and we're going to put up this image.
Who is that? What are they doing? What did you do to help him? Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Coming from the UNCCD, of course, we do not implement anything on the ground.
However, I'm a child of a farming community.
I've seen the changes and the transformation that has happened in my own country among young people.
When I was growing up, I would work the farm.
That's how I went through school.
But my nephews and nieces have not.
They are very far removed from the land and they don't even want to go back there.
Right? But the challenge for us as a G 20 is by 2050, we need to reduce degraded land by 50% and 1 billion hectares of land, according to UNCCD 1.2 billion now need to be restored by 2030, for us, half of that by 2040.
So how do we do it? One of the things we realized is that the land, if we leave the land is going to help itself, it's going to recover.
But we continually are degrading the land and we're not restoring it.
So at some point, there's going to be a breaking a tipping point where there will not be enough land to support future generations.
And so we realized very quickly that we need to work with young people.
But young people are not working with us.
They're not reading the news we're reading.
They're not listening to us, and they have an eco anxiety.
They know that something is broken, they know that something is wrong.
How do they fix it? So for us as the G 20, the innovation is to bring the private sector and especially young people into the restoration community to provide them the support that they have so that they can work the land, but not for free.
A lot of the work, I think that has been done and even I when I started as an activist, we used to do this restoration work for free.
There was no payment.
Young people do not want jobs that they are not going to be paid to do.
So here we have, and I hope he comes, he's supposed to be coming in.
So I'm going to tell his story.
I wish he was here to tell his own story because he tells it better than I do.
To the left is one of our entrepreneurs, and this initiative, I master is not just about UNCD, it's UNCD and the International Trade Center because they have the investment approach or the business approach.
So this young man is called Mashrol.
He's holding a gadget in his hand.
He's an electronic engineer from Bangladesh whose family lost their land to floods to a cyclone way back in the 1990s.
They left, they moved to the city.
With his degree, He thought, you know what? I might be able to do something for farmers in Bangladesh.
He tells me there are 22 million farmers in Bangladesh, right? And so he developed this little gadget.
What does it do? He's able to use that gadget on any farmer's land to actually assess the land, what it needs, what it lacks, what needs to be done, right? So the soil structure and the soil composition takes three to 5 minutes, and then he can advise the farmer about what to do.
What he's done on top of that he started to use satellite data and what do you call it satellites and sensing remote sensing and use remote sensing to layer into it the weather systems so that farmers do not just farm according to the season.
As Hilary said, we have two farming seasons.
We still operate on that model.
The farming seasons are shifting.
So instead of having to depend on knowing that this is the farming season, and so maybe I can start today, maybe it might be next week, it's do I do it now or do I do it in the future? He's been able to layer that onto the platform.
What he's been able to do is to help farmers in Bangladesh not to farm before it rains or too late after it rains, but just in time to ensure that whatever seed you plant will grow.
To enroll farmers into this platform was very difficult.
But something broke one day.
He warned a farmer who was going to plant on his garden that the rains were going to delay.
This farmer delayed his farming by whatever number of days he was told and for sure the rain never came.
But on the day he was told to farm, he did and the rain came soon after.
That changed because he started telling his friends who had farmed before him and lost their seed.
He realized very quickly that with all of that, there was trust that needed to be built because he was selling farmers all of these things, but they were not buying it.
But one farmer telling the other farmers made the difference.
He layered onto that system, local young people who would actually be able to use this gadget, go to the farmers.
By the way, the feedback you get from this gadget is in the local language, so you can read it for yourself.
So they started mobilizing farmers to actually enroll onto this platform, and the people who are doing that extension work are paid a small amount.
So the farmer subscribe pays $2.50 or something like that to get this information and they get the support from the extension system.
So this is what they've done.
By collecting that data, they realize something else.
So it doesn't stop there.
And this is the beauty of this innovation in terms of scaling.
He was looking at a small community.
But then the banks started getting interested in his innovation because now If a farmer comes to the bank and wants to borrow money to invest in their land, they can actually predict.
They know that this farmer has the knowledge when the farm is going to grow.
They can also estimate how much productivity they are going to get.
Now, the insurance companies got in and they realized, Oh, we can also cash in on this system.
It's grown to the point that he is actually now supporting 33,000 farmers in Bangladesh.
Let me come back to why we came into this.
This was happening without us knowing.
He had been doing this thing for a while, but it seemed not to be moving until he entered the youth entrepreneur program.
He could not register this company in his own country, so he called it Page and registered it in the US because he needed to keep his patent.
But he's serving the farmers in Bangladesh.
By joining our program where we took them through a boot camp and training and legal support, He won the award for the best product of that the first year that we started this.
That recognition alone by the UN.
By the time he landed back home, doors were opening for him to register his company.
He's now been able to work with farmers there.
He's shared this innovation with parliamentarians that we have invited to our events.
Those parliamentarians in countries in Africa want to work with him.
Now, there are 690 million smallholder farmers around the world that need this technology.
It's very simple, it is scalable, but without this kind of support, it's not going to go anywhere.
What's beautiful about this technology is that it's providing and the other startups that we are supporting.
We're looking at sustainability.
We're working with young people who are responding to the need for sustainability, ecological products, They're very conscious about what is being produced and what is being consumed, and this is the generation that's producing these kinds of technologies.
That's where we're at.
Hikaki, thank you very much indeed.
Thank you.
I am going to ask you to just come and sit down here very quickly.
We were keeping it going because I have been keeping an eye on that door.
Maria arrived.
Much only arrived last night, didn't he? He is in a taxi somewhere on his way here, en route here.
But you tried your best there and it was wonderful Gai.
Thank you very much.
Okay, so quick question.
That is your seat once we're done here.
Okay.
Okay.
In terms of trusting the system, you said, until we brought him on board, he couldn't publicize, he couldn't get the interest and ultimately, it wasn't automatically about finance, it was about helping his community, the farmers, and making sure there was food security in the country in Bangladesh.
Trust wise, is that an issue that you as an organization have had to work at? Has that ever come up in terms of enrolling people into the systems to help them? I think they trust at two levels.
The trust at the field level, which is his to deal with.
What we've recognized is that young people Systems do not trust them.
They think they're too young, they don't have the expertise, they probably have their head in the sky, they don't know what they're talking about.
How is it going to go? So there is trust in the systems that could actually finance them, but they need to be assured that what they're presenting is bankable.
Yes, there is a trust issue there and that's what we're trying to build.
Build the skills within the institutions that they have so that when they go to talk to bankers or when they go to talk to governments, they're communicating and they are of course able to show what they can do.
Well Gk, thank you very much.
Please take a seat.
Thank you.
To my audience, before we move on, I'm wondering, has anybody got a question? I mean, I can ask the questions, but I'm here for you as the panelists.
Does anyone have a question before we move on that you'd like to put to one of our innovators? No, we do.
Don't be shy.
We have the lady there and I'll take my microphone to the gentleman.
If you could begin for us.
Thank you.
Name, organization, host country.
My name is Paul Hallett, I'm from the UK, I'm representing British Society of Soil Science and also University of Aberdeen.
Just for two of the talks, one on chameleon and the last one, what are the costs of these instruments and do farmers need to pay for it? Then how does that affect adoption? Thank you.
Who would you like to put that to first? Okay.
Well, Gai, from what he has two models.
You can buy the instrument if you want to.
I'm not sure it's more than 300 euros.
I mean, he can speak about that.
I don't know, but I know that you can also just pay for the service.
So he gives the instrument to his extension workers.
You pay for the service.
For that subscription of two and 50, you get the full package, which is not too much to ask of a farmer.
And your second panelists that you wanted to put the question to the chameleon sensor.
Henri? Oh, okay.
Men.
Thank you.
That's the instrument cost is around $20 for the reader one, the other it costs around $50.
But the biggest issues about that one, the availability wherever that's available in Suba Africa, it's commonly available in South Asia.
It's available, but often when the price comes to the country, then taxation and everything and it becomes more expensive as a part of that one.
We have been working with the Came loan style master Sensor development company looking around business and financial model.
What would be the best model? Let's say if you want to farmer is interested in India, or farmer is interested in Cambodia or in Tanzania, what could be the business and financial model? How we could provide that kind of maybe pay as you go, all the other kind of services.
So we're exploring those one as a part of the development.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, indeed.
Our second question, please.
Thank you.
Hello.
Thank you for all the speakers as well.
My name is sine.
I'm from the Global Rebuilding Alliance and my question is to Ari.
I was wondering if the tool Tara, I could also be used to do the opposite.
He help governments also showcase recovery, recovery of the ecosystems.
Yeah, I was wondering if that's a tool that could help them also showcase that recovery.
Thank you, Henri? Yes, absolutely, and that's the purpose of the tool also.
It's to first identify wherever there is loss of vegetation cover, loss of trees and take action against that and also to be able to use it for reporting because governments have commitments and therefore they need to report and monitor.
Yes, absolutely.
Thank you very much.
Any other questions before we move on? I have a question to put to each of our panelists and you don't have to answer it in a positive way.
You are free to argue amongst yourselves on this.
We are celebrating innovation here today, of course.
But often communities will look on it and just think, here we go again, we have a pilot, they're reporting success, and then they leave us, they abandon us.
What makes the model that you're developing and that you're championing different? If you care to admit it, where is your model still vulnerable? Aja, is that something you could address for us, please? Thanks.
The first question on, how do we make sure it's sustainable and it's not just a pilot? I think we're trying to the core of our thinking here is to not have any one intervention or, um, innovation that we're looking at.
Even though I gave an example of how the government is looking at, say soil and moisture conservation and what are ecologically and socially appropriate interventions instead of that, that is just an example.
The thinking or the theory of change is that how do you really bring existing knowledge to the players who can do something about that knowledge? We're not looking at it from any one thematic that, okay, once we've gone now, what do you do? The question is, how do you create that system? How do you create a platform for knowledge exchange? How do you make sure that things that researchers, think tank, scientists are putting together have an inflow into the government system? It's not geographically or thematically defined, it's defined as trying to enable that information flow.
We'll have to see how that works, but that's the thinking behind it.
The second question on where we are still vulnerable, I think a lot of it for us is still people driven, which means that the Dependence on whether we will be successful or it won't work is very heavily dependent on who are the people who are enabling some of this.
Do you have people in the government or bureaucrats who are at that time even receptive to information being provided to them, or the people who are putting together the science, are they interested in going out of their way, out of their comfort zone and engaging with stakeholders who they may not normally do it? So it's very people centric and how it will become more institutionalized and how that conversation will keep going even if people move, transfer, they're not there is something that we still have to figure out.
Here, I'm going to pass microphone to you unless you have one.
Is that something you could also address for us, please? Yes, that's a very important questions and actually we haven't cracked the code.
We do have a sustainability problem, especially on the financial side.
We are still project based.
We hope to have the first private buyers.
I'm talking about my farm trees to be able to sustain the farmers.
For the moment, project based finances is on a three year cycles, whereas land restoration, as you know, takes much more time.
There is a gap here that we need to solve.
Our hope is that the private sector will engage as soon as possible to solve that.
It's always a private sector.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Next, Fiona.
Um, I think we're basically the investment hub acts as a facilitator.
So they're working with the producer and an investor.
The producer will always be there with their investment case and they will now have a written up document that they can continue to present to whoever they want to present it.
I think the platform, because it's basically playing a facilitating role, everything else around it will still exist.
And And then in terms of vulnerability or challenges, it's very time consuming to work through a process of developing an investment case with some of the cases who are very community level and focused and working through that process of thinking through financial forecasting and things like this, it's challenging.
This is a big challenge for us, and then of course, trying to harness that private sector finance knows.
Just very quickly, it's interesting you said that it's very time consuming.
What would help? What would break down the time that's needed on that process? I'm alluding to AI here, everyone.
Is that something you've thought about integrating within your model? We haven't.
No.
I'm a little bit wary about it.
There are these platforms being developed, and the Global Landscapes Forum is actually developing a platform through Rio Changemakers that is going to rely on AI quite a lot to help develop investment cases and also to match make them.
I'm a little bit worry about it because you're putting things out there without that personal touch and support and trust building and helping communities producers to think through that whole process, including the risks of such investments.
So I think It depends.
It depends on the investment case, but many that are really community grounded, a lot of thought and discussion and risk awareing and capacity building needs to go into it.
Thank you very much.
I'm going to actually change the question as I come to our three guests at the end there on the stage.
Which of the subjects or elements is the hardest to align when it comes to scaling restoration.
You've got the science, you've got the local knowledge, you've got the finance, you've got the governance.
Which is the hardest to align in practice and actually what makes it work when it does? Do we have a microphone here? Mosin, please.
Thank you.
The most critical thing is about the As a scientist, we produce so many products and everything, but then what actually that need to be it is facing a challenge at two places.
One is at the community scale level, that there is a need of action on the ground and that need to be owned, championed and then consulted with the community as a part of core design and everything.
That's an important one.
Second is, whatever the findings of that, how that could be linking to the policy level which are sitting at the ministry level and everything and saying it, we are able to translate into the language what they understand.
Often we stuck into them, we have a journal article 0R something that's not, but we can do it on the ground that people linking that one on the ground action to the policy changes.
And that's one of the biggest challenge which I see in a landscape restoration or any other activity, translation of the evidences to the policy domain.
Thank you.
Thank you, Hillary.
Thank you.
It's an interesting one talking of finance, governance, community.
The other one was science, right? Yeah.
I would say the other for me, all of them are tricky, but the oldest one is not one but the other thing is bringing all the four to match together in the same speed because science will tell us what is working.
The community would tell us actually in practical what is actually working in practice, then the governance would give us the enpling and Froman, and of course, finance times it.
But then if I were to choose between the three, I would say finance is the most challenging because often at times the financial circle is shorter compared to the ecological time when it comes to restoration and landscape recovery.
Yeah.
Thank you, Hillary, McCain.
And I alluded to this earlier on, young people particularly come into the business sector and into innovations, developing innovations with particular disadvantages.
I think the big one is really aligning I think they're able to pick the science.
I think they might even be able to mobilize communities.
I think it's the governance question and finance because it has to do with policy.
For these small startups to grow, they definitely need government support from the beginning because the structure does not exist, there is no enabling environment.
What we found, for instance, for a lot of these startups, and I'll tell you, just in Africa, we have over 3,000 startups, and we were not aware that there were startups actually working in land restoration.
But there are lots of them and they fail in the first five years because there's no ecosystem.
Built around those startups.
There's no enabling environment.
But even when they start, there's so much hesitancy about financing them, even when it's a good product.
There's so much hesitancy because they don't know whether it will scale.
My second example that I wanted to give you was a woman from Botswana who's working with women farmers.
She's very specific that she's developing this organic product for women because she knows they're going to take it and once they take it, they stay with it.
But she was doing very small scale and she was trying to get friends to finance the thing because nobody you're fighting against big fertilizer companies.
When she pitched her project, she won in Berlin.
She won $200,000 worth of consulting services from BCGX to help grow her product.
As a result of that process, she got an angel investor in her company.
Although she could do all of these things at the country level, there wasn't any alignment between what policy wants to do, what she wants to do, and it's also because there are other local interests that intervene.
Bogaki, thank you very much.
Any questions from the floor before I move on? Do we have any questions? Okay.
I think we accept nothing works without the finance, the financial backing.
However, of my guests on the stage.
I'm really keen to know having met your fellow panelists and from your position with your innovation, innovation or which of your peers on this stage right now would your innovation most heavily depend on in order for it to succeed.
At the beginning, we started off with that little poll and there were so many elements to restoring land.
Look around, you're thinking, a, I need to speak to them because I really need that plug in.
We're not going to talk about finance because we all know finance is there.
But innovation, which of your peers do you need in, that supply chain for your innovation to succeed? Could I have one of my panelists put their hand up, please.
Hillary.
I can see you.
Yes.
Yeah.
I'm looking at Fiona.
She's working on range land restoration.
Here I have a group of women producing indigenous cds, which she needs to use to restore those ranges.
Fiona, I'm here with a proposition.
Word it my women.
I love it.
Let's talk.
Anyone else, please would like to add to that.
Ano, yes? Sorry, we don't have enough microphones here.
Thank you.
So I was looking at Henry, because yeah, so for us to say that there are government finances that they're being spent and in a way that doesn't make sense.
We then also need the knowledge to be palatable in a tool, in a way that is usable for somebody.
When I look at a tool which says that, these are the right trees and right species and the right way to do it, then you need that tool so that you can hand it over to somebody and say that, this is the way to do it.
That's the kind of backing and foundational work that we have to do in order to have those interventions make sense.
I love this.
Moen, you have a You know, you have a hard case.
Are you okay with your innovation or is there someone you'd like to grab and say, listen, we need to talk over coffee? The innovation, I mean, of course, that need to working on various area, various plays, various sectors as a part of that one.
I was thinking about when we are talking about a landscape restoration in a bigger landscape in one, what Fiona is doing the work on the rainland and that's where the watershed management is quite critical.
And then when we are talking about the dry land agriculture or dry land for even pasture one, we could minimize that I mean, the use of water.
And that's where the instrument could play a role.
That's one of the activity where we could O is about that the community.
How we are able to pick up the things from that one, the community level.
What are the lessons as a part of that one, and then the framework and certain thing that could be incorporated wherever we are working it.
So these are the important one to innovation.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
Fiona, you're going to be very busy.
Thank you.
Yes, Henri.
Is it on? It is now? Yeah.
Okay.
One thing that surprised us with my Farm trees is that actually it was in Kenya we've seen that many women enrolled in the MyFm trees.
I would then have to talk to my colleague Hillary on the gender issue.
The other one is the fact that these tools are very data rich.
For that, I think our product will talk a lot also to what Fiona is doing.
On the record.
Perfect.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
I love the way you've brought the jigsaw together.
I really appreciate that.
Does anybody want to add anything else? I'm coming to a quick roundtable to bring our session to a close.
Any more contributions for meetings you'd like to get together? All right.
No questions from the floor.
All right.
From our panel, please, it's cop 18, one year on and you get an email saying, we'd like to bring you all back together again and see how much progress has been made in the 12 months.
What is the one concrete thing? I only need one commitment per speaker, whether it's a policy adopted, a partnership signed, a pilot that's been scaled that would tell you that this session has actually been successful and you've moved that step forward.
What would you say needs to be delivered in 12 months? Fiona, I'm going to start with you, please.
Investment or we're talking about a governance milestone.
What for you would you like to come away with? Yeah, I guess going back to, an investment amount.
That's $3 million invested through livestock value chains for range and its restoration from private sector.
Thank you, Henri.
Commitment.
Yes, I won't be very creative.
Unfortunately, it's the same.
In 12 months from now, I would like to have our first private sector buyer of my Farm trees payment for ecosystem services and to get out of the project based financing.
This is something we would like to achieve in one year and I hope we've been convincing with that.
Mosin.
From 12 months now, we will be looking for the adoption of the artificial Intelligian space irrigation demand forecasting tool by the government for that one for day to day decision making.
That's what I will be looking.
He right? I'm looking at bringing more women into restoration space, and I think therefore is in landscape restoration.
Okay.
And DJ? We will hope to have enabled large chunks of public finance in India focused on grassland restoration in a way that ecologically makes sense.
Wagaki please.
How I wish we would have five governments that say we're going to set up a startup fund and to build an ecosystem of these startups in our countries, five countries, just five.
You make it sound so simple.
All of you throughout like we said, it's the financial element.
What does a government need to do to make that happen? Often, it's the people who have got the solution or are at the ground level with the problem who know that one policy change that could make all the difference.
Does somebody have a simple solution to getting that governance support? I think for the startups, governments have so much demand for resources and competing demands from the public as well.
A lot of people have money that they've kept that they're keeping for their children than their children's children.
God knows whether they will survive the climate.
I think it will take the private sector in those countries saying, we will set up a fund, but we need a mechanism from the government or we will set up a system that requires some government support to make sure it exists.
Foundations in the US, for example, They are exempted from taxes, so they're able to set something like that.
Then that fund is used to actually help the startups or to support that ecosystem development.
I've seen that work in one or two cases, but maybe that's what's needed.
Thank you very much.
Before I bring this session to a close, any more comments from our panelists? Any questions from the audience? Okay.
Thank you very much, indeed, Wagaki, Hillary, Mosin, Fiona, Henri, A Anuja.
It's been a pleasure and thank you for your time and sharing your innovations.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's all about money, isn't it? Oh, thank you so much.
Can we just have a quick picture, please, with our team on the stage? If we could just gather around just to commemorate the moment.
Let's come together.
Let's get a picture.
Yes.
Come in, in, come in.
Wonderful.
Well, Gucki, I think you need to go in the middle and I'm not going to say why.
No.
Good try.
Thank you.
Yes, yes, you were.
I you go.
Well, let's get one with our panelists and then I'll jump in.
Thank you.
Here I come.
Here I come.
Here I come.
Yes.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Enjoy the rest of your Cop 17.
It's been a pleasure.