Scaling Landscape Restoration Innovation Bundles: From Evidence to Investable Action - Action Dome, UNCCD COP17

Years.
I went back home, started intervt.
If you Google globalists report.org, you will see me and my Christian Catholic counterpart.
We started it to neutralize detention of insurgency and insecurity and perspective of mischief makers that Christians are Muslim are not same.
We did it We started planting trees, but beyond tree planting, we introduced entrepreneurship.
But our use are not going to the lands to farm.
Why? We found out that our soil had degraded and we needed to restore the land because of misuse of chemical fertilizer.
Hence, I paid myself here with a safe help of the family to come to reconnect with Islamimi relief World, which I've lost connectivity with.
I did not know I was going to find W Islami relief World by the G 20 Global and Initiative.
I congratulate myself.
Secondly, there was an initiative in Kenya in 2015.
This was what brought me here.
2015, there was Islamic F in Kenya sponsored by Alliance for Religions and Conservation.
Anywhere I went since I came, I did not find my mates everywhere, youth, entrepreneur.
Nothing that connects me to this because of my age.
I'm 70 years.
Nothing connect me here.
I was feeling disturbed until I encountered Anita.
And all what I want is now resonating here.
I want to sincerely appreciate you.
My question is, how can we benefit from the faith for and master class Mi not my age, my youth are there.
Waiting because we want to restore our lands.
Chemical fertilizer have set us to where we are.
Farmers are no fatter, the herdsmen are losing weight.
What happened? Cancer has taken over Nigeria place because of we have disconnected from nature, and we have tampered with it beyond limits through so many ways.
Hence my question, how can I be helped out to reconnect with and sustain this very platform? Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, sister, and My sister is also part of the Uma for Earth Alliance, which is the largest Muslim Alliance of climate and nature organizations in the world.
I'll come to your question in a moment.
I just also want to thank you for also really re emphasizing how important this work is, how important it is to engage faith communities in this process for us to find each other and to find each other here.
Thank you, sister.
And I have these two friends and colleagues here.
Thank you.
Yeah, good afternoon.
My name is Angeles Michael.
I'm from India.
I'm part of the World Council of Churches delegation here.
Thank you very much.
I want to thank all the presenters, you representing different faith communities coming together and bringing your different perspectives itself so it's a positive sign towards our struggle for the restoration of land and protecting land.
Um I come from an organization called India Peace Center.
We work with different communities, faith communities, the Bahas, Brahma Kumaris we have on our board people from Sikhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity.
One of my questions is, the faith communities, faith organizations around the globe on a significant and considerable amount of land, and so how they productively make use of the land.
You know, this is my question, and also about the concept of stewardship, which exist in almost all religions and religious scriptures, and it does in Christianity as well, Can we also go beyond the stewardship? Because stewardship is a choice and the religious scripture urges us to be co creator with God and not just taking care of the creation, but to act as if we are the creator.
Thank you very much.
Yes, good afternoon.
I am Angelique Walker Smith, and I am president of World Council of Churches from North America Turtle Island with my dear brother, our delegation from World Council of Churches.
But again, I'm coming from North America Turtle Island.
I want to appreciate everything that's been said.
I'm very grateful to have arrived last night for this journey and to have this kind of presentation.
I So I'm one that is really probing more deeply the indigenous communities in my part of the world in North America, Turtle Island.
So often our indigenous communities are not properly respected or recognized.
This is a failure, and we're speaking through that and to that in this particular season of World Council of Churches.
My question is, well, let me first say an affirmation.
I hear a wonderful thread of the importance of indigenous perspectives in all of what has been said.
I'd be very interested for you to respond two ways.
One, I think I'm right about that, but I haven't heard it explicitly stated necessarily from the presentations or I missed it.
It's quite possible I got in very late last night.
But my second part of the question is, particularly in my part of the world, North America Turtle Island, what do you want to say to us, particularly with your presentations today, that I think also can encourage leadership in our part of the world around what is being said today.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much and also just to say, with the World Council of Churches, Reverend Adré L will be joining us for a Business for Land and Faith presentation next week.
We have a couple of questions as well to close us out.
I will maybe just start with just the faith for and question more broadly, just to respond to the system directly Um, the intention is for Faith for and to be an independent global coalition of faith organizations working around land restoration, racing diversification to work around capacity building efforts.
So the master class is available in eight different languages to be accessed by faith leaders who want to learn sort of the different steps around faith and land restoration, and that'll be connected to larger technical support.
It's also exactly as you said, the space is missing at the moment for faith organizations to engage, both in this convention more broadly speaking, and that's what the G 20 has been building over the last couple of years.
But in the many different connected friends and networks, whether it's from dry lands to the wetlands convention beyond, we don't necessarily have an organized faith presence, so the Faith for and coalition will be there to support that.
That's the easy question.
I'll leave the harder questions to the experts.
We have a question sort of more broadly speaking around faith organizations have large land holding.
So what do we do to really take that from large landholdings towards restoration? You also have a question of how can we also go beyond the concept of stewardship, actually acting as creation itself and to participate in creation? Then we have a brilliant question around indigenous peoples and local communities of how and where the faith communities engage in a more positive way and also more direct question around what we say to the people of Turtle Island.
Hugh hands I start with you.
If I may respond to your specific question around traditional and indigenous wisdom.
To give you just one example from my own experience working with smallholder farmers in Haiti and they've gone through a lot of challenges.
One of the things that we discovered early on and I began working with smallholders there in 2010 There was a long tradition in Haiti and it was called combit.
It's a Haitian Creole word that means working together.
And so the tradition was that in the farming communities at harvest time and at planting time, farm families would volunteer to help each other without pay, without expectation, but simply, it was a community response that had been a long ancestral tradition, but it had been lost almost completely in Haiti because of the extreme poverty that meant it was hard for farmers to even think about this.
We consciously began to Look at how you could reinstitute Combat as a tradition and not impose anything on it, but simply what could we do to help revive it? Now, and in this particular case, we have about 10,000 farmer members and Combat has come back roaring and it's a key part now of how the farmers work together.
What we discovered was that our contribution as an organization, this may sound odd, was to provide food.
Because that was one of the components of Combat that one of the reasons that had been lost was that the farmers couldn't afford that contribution.
And so we would provide the meal around which the volunteer service could take place.
But then once that gets restored, then there's a sort of element of dignity that comes back into the community because they see that tradition has come back.
They acknowledge it as a long ancestral process, but now it's rooted in the community and there again.
That's just one example.
But I appreciate.
When you ask how to advise you and your community.
When I started this work in Haiti with my Haitian colleague, we went around the country and we basically asked farmers what they needed.
And we then took that advice and formed an organization just to say.
Thank you.
I also got to sign.
We have 2 minutes left.
So I'll also sign posts for the conversation.
We'll continue onto those chairs there in a moment.
Any other closing words in direct response to the questions and debuts.
Quick and precise.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
I would like to offer an idea to experiment to my brother from India from WCC regarding going beyond the stewardship.
Once one of the astronauts, I don't remember his name, when he saw the Earth from the space, he saw this blue marble, and then he realized, and then he said that Earth doesn't need to be saved.
It has to be loved.
So I think it's a matter of attitude, how we look at what is to be done.
For me, it's the power of love that makes me do what I do.
It's not like hardship, hard work.
But this requires that I have this love and this I can get only from the source of love through maintaining this connection, and then treating Earth as mother to have really this relationship, and then everyone becomes my brother.
I think this is the matter of an attitude for me.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
I just to assure my sister from North America that at WWF Believes in Values Program, the indigenous people are a very integral part of that program.
When you talk about what we believe and our spiritual values, the indigenous peoples are connected.
In Kenya, we are protecting the Kayah forests where the Mij Kenda people live and WWF has supported them even to develop a policy around that and fenced off their forests for their spiritual well being.
That is well taken care of.
And finally, to my sister from Nigeria, Islamic farming is getting widely practiced.
I was involved initially in developing the toolkit by AC in Nairobi, and I'm happy to give you an online version of that toolkit.
I'm happy to share with you the Al Mizan which you know is the Islamic covenant for Earth so that you can do more of what the Islamic faith says about that.
Thank you.
Amy, closing word to you.
All right.
Thank you, everyone and fellow citizen of Turtle Island.
That's a great challenge.
Just practically, I think one of the things within the Catholic Church, some communities are exploring a return of the land to the original people.
Our properties, parishes returning that land, I can share more with you about that.
But I guess I just want to close by saying that as people of faith, I think probably across all of our traditions, we have a different sense of time and In these cups, I think there's always a great sense of urgency and which is real, which is very real.
And I think as people of faith, what we can do and what we often do is live in that liminal time.
When it's bigger than ourselves, it's much longer in both directions and living in concrete realities that have real urgency.
And so to be able to live in that short and long time.
Thank you.
That's a beautiful way to end.
Thank you for your time and thank you for joining us, and the conversation will continue.
Thank you, everyone.
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Thanks for the people who were here for the privilege session.
They said they did their best to keep time, but they ate 6 minutes in our budget, but we will be able to organize ourselves in a different way.
I just remember when I go to church, I go for 90 minutes and I end up spending 3 hours over there.
We have to understand what it is.
Welcome to everyone who is joining the next session.
And we will be talking about scaling landscape restoration, innovation bundles from evidence to investment action.
We will give you one or 2 minutes to get seated and to allow those who have another agenda probably to exit and stay with those who would like to listen to the discussion.
In 1 minute, we'll get started and welcome everyone.
Nice to meet you.
We will chat because we would also like a bilateral meeting, not necessarily today, but one of these days before you travel.
I'm here on eight.
We look forward.
Thank you very much.
I will introduce Mr.
Who is the director.
Good evening, everyone.
Let us get started.
Once again, welcome to this session.
We will be mainly looking into investing in scaling landscape solutions, really thinking about investing.
Yesterday, we spent a good quality time here from 11 30 for 90 minutes talking about different landscape innovations.
We talked about landscape, range, investment H.
We talked about water use efficiency.
We talked about women lead seed banks, and so on.
Several innovations which exist.
And the problem we often have when we go in the field, you don't see those innovations being applied.
Some of them are applied, of course, but there are a lot of innovations which are sitting on the shelves because of the challenges that we face with scaling and especially investing in scaling.
Today we will hear from the various panelists and also the audience because there will be significant interactions with the audience in terms of the barriers and the options to overcome them.
Before we go there, I would like to invite our Director of the M Function Landscape Science Program, Lucged to also share his deflections about the challenges and the opportunities of scaling landscape innovations.
Do the floor is yours.
Thank you, Carla.
Good afternoon, colleagues.
Welcome for this session.
As Karge indicated, we're discussing on scaling technologies and solutions, mostly related to landscape restoration and what a very good opportunity to have this session in Mongolia.
Because as you may know, Mongolia, more than 80% of the land is degraded, which is two times higher than the global average.
So that means at a time where we have to provide solutions for that degradation.
And as we also know, land degradation is a systemic issue, a systems process that doesn't affect single elements that affects different components of the system.
If we degrade the forest, then there is implication on the soil on water or livelihoods and so forth.
That means we need solutions that integrate across those components.
Then for those, it is essential to bundle.
That is the reason why we are trying to say bundling is key.
However, bundling is not combining everything.
Bundling is organizing, arranging solutions that fit specific conditions, socioeconomic and environmental realities.
Today, I think we'll hear on those bundling efforts, processes, and so forth.
Then once they are bundled fitting into the environment and the socioeconomic situations, then the next one is to scale them, to make them available for the people, the partners, the governments, the countries they need them.
So scaling is also crucial because we cannot scale randomly one solution into another.
We have to still fit into the situations.
Most of the time we develop technologies, and then we try to see where to scale them.
But in sometimes we all pre organize ourselves on how If we develop these solutions in this environment, where can they likely scale? There are two approach to do.
Also in the scaling, one important thing is we should not scale one element or one component.
It's important to scale the whole system.
For example, if we are working on solutions that are going to be applied for a certain locations, then we have to say, how do we diagonize those areas prioritize where to intervene and what solutions are available, how do we bundle those, organize them, and finance them, create institutions to implement and governance systems, and also how to generate evidence.
This is also very important.
For this, we have the science to do it.
Science can do what intervention should be prioritized, how should we bundle, and all sorts of things.
Now with a lot of data already available and analytical capabilities, there are possibilities to do those.
But one important thing in the CJR and in my area of multifunctional landscapes, we have For example, a chain of areas that are selected to represent the different ecosystems or eco regions or biomes from the Amazon to Asia in the lower Mekong system.
We have the Amazon, we have the Mediterranean system, the Sahel, the Indian, the Eastern Africa, and so on and so forth.
That is aimed to facilitate scaling as well.
An important element I want to mention is about evidence generation.
In most of the cases, we do a lot of restoration work, but the evidence we have in developing regions mostly are photos.
Photos are good, they are important to show, but they cannot be used to quantify for carbon or biodiversity credit or financial returns.
So we need to generate those evidences and there are a lot of performances in the landscapes.
So if we are able to demonstrate the value of those ecosystem restoration practices that we have undertaken, then there is a possibility to make them investable as well.
If we are able to demonstrate what the functions, the values of those interventions are, and there were able to make them investable.
If we can make them investable, then we can make them scalable and if we can them scalable, then there is a possibility to reach to the targets we are looking for.
In this discussion, we try to achieve around three things.
Number one, what are that solutions bundles that are available for scaling or to be scaled.
Number two, what are the processes to make them investable? You know, they have solutions and so on, which are struggling to make the investable.
So what should we do to make the investable? And the third one is what what partnerships should be in place to make those technologies and solutions achieve their targets.
So I think generally for this work and the circumstances where we are now in the UN CCD, I want us to engage on move from commitments to implementation, which is important and also from piloting to scaling, which is very important as well, and keeping in mind that we have only three years left for our 2030 commitments as a commitments that we have in the first round.
I hope we'll learn a lot from this introduction and once more, thank you so much for coming.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, R.
I appreciate it.
You can drop it here.
Yeah.
Thanks.
You just set the seed.
Now to get it concretely, we need a few examples.
He gave us just a big picture, but by getting it with a few examples, I think we can have more.
I will start inviting a few colleagues to set the scene for us, starting with Victoria Gdriz.
She comes to us from the common land, the stage, please, and she's the head of the global senior expert in ecosystem and land restoration involving bridging science, policy practices, and international NGOs.
Then we have also Buchan, Seth, who comes to us from the 1,000 landscape and also from the Gallup Initiative.
He's the founder of the Gallup Initiatives and sits on the steering committee of the 1,000 landscape for 1 billion people advancing approaches for integrated landscape management.
I also want to invite Bbque Dabe from Accra who's a principal scientist and involved in economics and modeling.
And he has been working in West Asia, Africa, and the Arab Peninsula and he's really involved in aspects related to partnership, technology adoption, and impact assessments.
With all those examples, I think we have a lot to learn, I will hand over the microphone.
Each of them has a budget of 5 minutes.
You can see.
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon, everyone.
I Perhaps I just want to start by saying, when we set restoration targets, we very often see these expressed as a single number.
We talk about X number of hectors to be restored by a certain year.
It seems to give the impression that restoration happens through a single action that we just need to repeat.
But no restoration, and we don't restore any hectas by doing the same thing.
What I want to show is an example of one of the initiatives that Common land has been involved in from its inception.
It is based in Southeastern Spain.
It's situated in the southeastern, in the Ate Planea, it's a high level plateau.
It's very dry and in 2010, it was considered one of the most depleted, most degraded areas in Europe, 40% of unemployment and a very steep out migration, so all the youth were leaving.
So in 2014, common land with about 30 individuals came together to consider the possibility of a different future.
And people were asked, if you were allowed to dream, what would that future look like? So they began with a vision, and that vision developed into a landscape level plan.
And that landscape level plan was then initiated by an association, Al Vlal a year later in 2015, funded by 30 people back then, now over 600 members.
In this initiative that you see the map there, I want to highlight the range of activities and solutions that came together to really bring together an enormous effort from these communities that really, um, identified multiple objectives, shared objectives for their future.
You see that behind every number that you see on the screen, there were multiple solutions that were implemented and some of them started with nature.
So the area that was surrounding the plateau had a lot of very old forest plantations.
They began thinning those plantations and start planting not everywhere, but in the right places, native species of trees.
Then one of the biggest entry points was regenerative farming.
So they started implementing water conservation measures, and they started implementing moving from high input agriculture towards regenerative aquaticulture.
That has been very successful.
They also invested in building social capital and building employment, developing business cases that led to three different companies producing wine, producing olive oil producing almonds.
Almonds is one of the largest areas after California.
Almond production is very important.
And they created a machinery bank to share and loan regenerative machines so they didn't have to pay it out of their own pockets.
They also created a food processing plant that also helped them market the product that they were producing.
And very importantly, they invested in people.
They created a whole very diverse set of initiatives and small projects that were inclusive in nature, that were intergenerational.
They created festivals, ways of connecting the young with the old.
They created educational programs, and overall, an amazing amount of work.
So farming became something that they wanted to be proud of, and I think that that was one of the important drivers.
The map on the right that you see there is 1 million hectares.
So we're looking at a very vast area.
One of the objectives is to connect the four green areas that you see there that are natural parks or reserves through wildlife corridors, and so they are giving up a both public and private land to be able to make those ecological corridors.
You see the distribution of the activities on that map.
Yes, there is both the social connectivity that they're also working towards.
This is really impressive.
Um and none of it, I'm finishing.
None of it would have happened because of a single action.
But all of these actions were designed in an interdependent way to contribute to a holistic way of understanding a systemic way of understanding the landscape.
Thank you very much.
I think when we talk about millions of acres, we are talking about something.
Let us share from the perspective of C 1,000 landscape per million for 5 minutes Thanks, Kgedri.
Thanks, Lusk for setting the stage, and, uh, Thanks to Victoria for laying that out.
You've made my job easy by putting the basics in, so I can hopefully represent the value chain a bit wider.
I'm going to start with a specific landscape from India for the simple reason that it shows an MSP or a multi stakeholder partnership working out very well.
But what I also want to get to the floor today is how Gallup is helping scale that at a regional, state, and national levels.
So I'm going to speak about this photo that you see behind me.
You can scan the code to get details of that project.
But it's in an area called Madhya Pradesh in Central India.
It's a cotton growing belt, which over the last 50 to 70 years had lost its yield and the organicness of the cotton there because of the extractive practices and the artificial ingredients added over time.
In 2020, it's a very young example.
In 2020, the Lodes Foundation, along with IDH and WWF India took part in trying to see what they could do together.
And what they did was they gave a blueprint to build a supply chain of organic cotton.
IDH got the technology, Lodes Foundation got the funding, WWF India gave the other connections of setting up a ten CSO led multi stakeholder partnership.
The outcomes of this has been that over time, the quality of cotton coming back from there is organic, is preferred.
It's in the value chain of sustainably produced cotton.
And along with growing cotton, they're now doing agro hot forestry at scale, which has taken the farmer incomes to a very different level.
It has helped develop a local GDP.
The private sector is engaging is putting cotton processing units in the nearby regions.
So you have farm income and you also have farm based income.
So migration of the next generations to cities for production and other areas, it has reduced.
So people are staying in the geography.
So I will not go too much into the details.
Everybody in the room is aware of what restoration takes.
But just to give you a sense of numbers, the initial goal was to benefit 25,000 farmers, and as of the last count, we already crossed 82,000 farmers.
The target was almost to get 300,000 hectas under integrated landscape management.
We are at about 260,000.
It's actually surprised everyone in a very nice way.
Now as a wishful thinking, what would it take to replicate this in each and every landscape? So that's what Gallup started to set out.
So just as a quick background, 1,000 landscapes is an initiative by Eco agriculture Partners, which we kicked off in 2020.
At the same time, I launched Gallup Initiative, which is a policy platform to help scale ILM.
So what we've been doing We are taking what are the successes of an experiment like this that has done very well to the local people, to the landscapes.
The biggest driver is local GDP.
SDGs are improving, biodiversity areas left alone, so it's supporting 30 by 30 and the immediate climate change impacts are softening out, right? So we looked at a GDP based model.
So if we invest in restoration, what would it take? So when we ran numbers for India as a country, about 120,000 hectas is degraded plus drought affected in India.
97,000 is officially 1 million hectas is officially degraded as per the statistic of India.
If you leave protected areas out and you look at revenue areas and you build models such that you deploy 20% agri hot forestry and 80% NTFP, every dollar of public money or funding that comes into the landscapes delivers 30 over time.
Okay.
And when you do this number, it adds about 130 billion to GDP at scale.
So that's what we are engaged at the national level.
So I think I am doing well on time.
Should I I think we can move on with B.
Perfect.
Thank you.
But we appreciate the increase of GDP because if you increase the GDP, no way that we can't go back and invest in randscape restoration.
I appreciate Bob more of experience.
Maybe you tell us how you turn the GDP into investable landscapes.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, colleagues.
It is really a great pleasure today to represent the multiacur landscape team here in this excellent event.
Let me start this example with the story behind it.
So In a degraded land in the northwest of Tunisia, there is an alternate genetic resources for olives that becomes to more than 3,000 years since the Roman Empire.
Within our living lab when we started the process of analysis there and to start the work of the Agricology Initiative, we noted such potential there through these local varieties and how they can be capitalized and could be economically viable in the long run.
So we started the process with our national partner, with the Agricological initiative colleagues and later on to continue with the manufacturer landscape colleagues.
So to develop what we call geographic indication for this autoic variety.
And at the same time to initiate the process of agrcological transformation, through a bundle of innovation, a bundle of innovation that are linked to this olive based system.
But we supported this through a farmer organization, and then through the upgrading of this local value chain, and through the development of an agrcological business model.
The three elements that are really the pilots of this transformation to create this geographic indication and we are getting the full IPR from the government, to have the accreditation and hopefully we will get it by the end of this year.
This work has been done since 2022, more than six years or five years working on git.
What is the advantage to have this geographic indication for these farmers? So the main advantage is to upgrade a little bit this local value chain toward an added value related with business as usual, so to create a market already exists there, not only at the national level, but at the international level.
With this farmer organization, so there is more trust, there is more emphasis in terms of strengthening, so the willingness of these farmers to adopt these agrlogical practices, to work together, to engage together.
So now, it came as two key critical points, which are the private sector and the financial institution, which is the main barriers for this financial funding.
But we have the private sector.
Today we have two or three key private entrepreneurs behind this successful story to capitalize what it has been done there, for this specific olive oil category.
So the scaling now.
So the process is there.
The concept is well designed, and to scale this concept, So it becomes demand driven today.
So when we develop different workshops around the country, with the different farmers, with the different stakeholder decision maker, private sector, financial institution, we are getting some demands from other stakeholder really to capitalize another local value chain using the same concept.
So I think the scaling at some point, it could be demanded driven.
Not only to go from the science because it has been evidenced, what we already developed there and it could be really an excellent prototype to be scaled later on, not only at the level of the country, but also for the Mediterranean region and also for the international arena.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, all of you.
I will ask you to stay around.
I still have a few questions for you to find more from your strong background.
But we understand that scaling is not a business of only government, but it's something that will be successful if you are able to mobilize the local and landscape actors, if you are able to mobilize the private sector and be able to create business models.
We will continue with them, but we add to the list by inviting in Labdin cis comes to us from the Ministry of Environment from Tunisia.
He's a civil servant and environmental engineer by training.
He has worked for engineering consultants and also as a regional representative of the Ministry of Environment and Agriculture and he's actively involved in the civil society initiatives.
Welcome.
Now, let us come back to the interesting discussion that we just had and we got excellent examples from all of you.
But I will start with you again, Victoria, as I started with you earlier.
If we try to draw from your experience, what kind of mix of ecological, social, financial, and governance bundling that we need to be able to really improve the scale of innovations and be able to create impacts at landscape scale.
3 minutes for now.
Okay.
Thank you, Kargle.
The question is about all the conditions.
Yeah.
To find out what's going on? What I want to find out more from you is realizing on the concrete example you shared with us and try to see how do we mix all those in terms of considering as I listened to all of you, we heard about ecological solutions, we heard about social innovations, we heard about economic consideration like business model.
How do we mix all of those to be able to scale and generate impacts at scale? So, In general, the actual case that I was talking about, but also from other cases that were involved in, what stands out very clearly is that you may have different entry points to landscape restoration.
Landscapes are in different stages of degradation.
They have different populations in them, different histories, different political contexts.
But regardless of the specific conditions in a landscape, The ultimate changes that we want to see, the transformations that we want to see really call for a diverse set of solutions, restorative actions that really bring together the natural, the social, the economical, and also what we call a common land, the inspirational, more spiritual components that are really driving people to continue fighting for the landscape.
So all of them are needed, and maybe the entry points may differ.
Maybe it is farmers who start with their own vision.
So it's forest communities.
I don't think it really matters.
What matters is that we think about the context holistically and we think about the actions that we take in a system independent way so that we identify ways in which these actions can reinforce each other.
That is the most efficient, more resilient way.
Um, and I think what that leads to is diverse, resilient landscapes that are really stewarded by communities and by local actors.
Thank you very much.
I think really getting all the acts, as we said earlier, is very, very critical.
Let us move with the push now.
You gave us a good example of organic cotton and others, something that has been done as a great job at landscape scale.
But the question is, we really want to see transformation even at national level, even at the global level.
What kind of tips or kind of partnership you can suggest in terms of moving such kind of innovation from local to national level and even beyond.
In 3 minutes.
Thanks.
Thanks, Liz.
I think the basic thing we got to understand is in the multilateral system today, there are conventions, there are targets, we are trying to achieve so many things.
But at the base of all of this, what is it we're trying to achieve? We're trying to achieve people's needs, as the World Bank now phrases it, sustainable life on a livable planet, so we need to have good life and sustain our planet.
The best quality we need to understand a landscape is a living and regenerative system.
It is our actions on land over time that has caused degradations.
So if you go back to the basics and work out the math of how we could restore this based on each location's biophysical, socio ecological, sociocultural, socioeconomic characteristics, and ensure that people can make a livelihood in a way that it helps the landscape restore.
That's why Gallup stands for nothing but global livelihoods and landscape recovery platform.
If people can have green economies, sustainable businesses, that is the way forward.
But in today's time where we live in a GDP starved world where GDP to debt is one is to three, you have to help build a local economy.
If your policy actions, your private sector engagements are in the directions, social capital alliance to deliver over time, social capital is the longest insurance you have to keep a project growing in spite of ups and downs.
I took only 2 minutes, but that's my question.
Thank you very much.
I think you gave us a couple of things that need to be considered for things to work.
It's really helps a lot to move to Bobacka in terms of the thinking, there are several things to consider which probably cause for synergies and trade offs.
But for now, I want you, Boback, to focus on trade offs.
If you try to think about what he said or what you think, what kind of trade offs that researchers and governments need to consider to be able to make a strong case for investing in landscapes.
Yeah.
Thank you.
It is an excellent question because the trade off it is a little bit different from the different perspective.
My thinking, I think the trade off it is not simply productivity versus sustainability.
It is short term productivity versus long term productive capacity.
In the first, so I think the rotation intervention can create some opportunity cost.
Neogenetic resources, they have some cost.
Bars and grange land can have some cost, yes, it can be a short term cost, but the relevant comparison, it's not restoration versus zero cost, but it is restoration versus continued degradation.
In this case, it is important to understand to what extent our investment analysis, which need to be counterfactual.
It means what happens if we do nothing? What happens? What the productivity look like in ten years, the livestock, the climate shocks, the water availability, et cetera This is how restoration can take or became an economic argument rather than environmental argument.
So the second trade off is between private cost and public benefit.
I think here maybe the farmer may pay this transition, but the society will take advantage, I think, from the benefit for biodiversity, the carbon sequestration, the water regulation, et cetera.
I think here there is a need for public policy really to create an incentive system or a financial mechanism that connects this public benefit.
As I mentioned, with the private incentives.
The third trade off, it is the food security versus food sovereignty.
Food security is fundamental and all of us we know this.
But people need reliable access to sufficient nutritional food as this famous definition for FOO, but restoration also forces us to ask who controls the genetic resources, who controls the productive assets? Who controls the knowledge? Who is taking benefit from this added value? I think sovereignty in this context does not mean rejecting market or international trade.
It is ensuring the local producer and community really get sufficient capacity to produce in the long run.
So the last trade off, I guess, is the efficiency and resilience.
So he specialized system, I think, can be extremely efficient under some stable condition, but we are not under stable condition.
So in this case, we would not optimize only for today's output.
We need to optimize the capacity of the landscapes to continue producing under tomorrow situation and under tomorrow uncertainty.
This is why the manufacturer landscape, I think the program could play an excellent role here really to secure this continuity in terms of producing under this tomorrow uncertainty.
If I can summarize this, I would summarize the listen this way.
The trade off is not between restoration and development.
The real trade off is between short term and long interpreter.
It is between private costs and public benefit.
It is between individual and collective interest and food security and control over productive resources and efficiency and reasoning.
Our role as a researcher is really to make those trade off visible and measurable.
The government is to create the policy, and I think the civil society and the committee, the private actor is to be responsible to the implementation of all this process.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Very smiling.
Probably we have gone beyond our budget, but we try to catch up.
The good thing is, I like that Zin is your neighbor and I just want to find out from Zin repeating on everything you've said.
I know they have been applying everything you said in the context of Tunisia and that has allowed them to be very successful in terms of good management of dry.
What I want from you is to share with us your experience, why things worked for you and what other countries which are facing d issues in draft can learn from you to be also successful.
You have 5 minutes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good afternoon.
I am honored to participate in this important meeting.
Please.
I am Z Abin.
My name is I Aden.
Today, I will present Tunisian experience in the range land management across our southern regions.
Beginning by the Tunisia, there are over 80% of Tunisian territory is vulnerable to desertification.
Randan Area are rapidly shaking.
Due to overpricing, agriculture expenses, urbanization, or communal lands.
I will speak about the project pursuit in the south of Tunisia was the case study financed by FDA This project shave it, measure land restoration by resting of land.
The successful of this project policy and strategy built around a modern functional land policy, integrate project design and declare exist strategy.
The second is the governance and science because these projects are driven by a strong Minister of agriculture and scientific research institute that Iran need.
The third is the core intervention.
This project integrated rangeland restoration, resting land, resilient species planting, pastoral hydraulic provir Frail, rural access tracks, photovoltaic equipment, and traditional rainwater harvesting, technique that Jour measures gear.
The four skills is socioeconomic focus, development of income generating activity, AGIs, support for local SML, lit entropies, and directed engagement of grosser committee organization.
In Tunisia, we have a pipeline of future restoration projects.
We have four project, Tunisian Greek Corridor Project, Pare Project, Cesa and Iskil Landscape Preso Project, and Tunisian Green Shield Project in the South.
In comparison, we can suggest the following to To the future, road map for successful range land restoring in growth prone regions.
First, execute high impact large scale restoration initiative.
Second, diversify and scale up sensitive mechanism for range land conversation.
And secure and mobilize long term financial resource.
Third, leverage extensive research on pastoralism while directing future study towards scientific gaps.
Ecosystem service of medicinal and aromatic plans is the example.
Four, is promote sustainable pastoral tourism and foster value chain development.
Five, align national strategy with global frameworks, including the sustainable development goals and the new conventions.
Finally, deploy smart remote sensing systems to track livestock movement with live, water pointers, and vegetation dynamic in a ride zone.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I think this is the first round of the panel, and we learned a lot from what you just said, Zenith in terms of really having a clear landscape vision and make sure that we have several entry points to be able to transform our landscape.
So thank you very much for the follow through.
Let us invite the next four also to enrich the discussion and I will be recording on Nadia Kamari.
Nadia Kamari is a senior expert in strategic communications, partnerships and advocacy with experience with the Saharan Sahara Observatory, but also FAO, UNDP, and the African Union Commissions.
Welcome.
We also invite Ichiro Hammer.
She comes to us from the Ministry of Environment of Japan, and she also cooperates with the UNU and is also the Deputy Director of the EPSR Secretariat and contributes to the Satoyama Initiative for landscape Approaches.
Welcome.
Then appoint Belgit Harberman Belt works for Erie since 2019 and has over 20 years of experience in research on agriculture, forests, livestock, and biodiversity, and also bringing in the private sector of financing institutions with Christynson who comes to us from the ADP, the Asian Development Bank with more than 30 years of experience with natural based solutions for resilience of the ecosystems in Asia, Pacific, and Africa.
I just gave you a quick snapshot in the interest of time, but we have details of the bio and you'll get to learn more from what they have been doing.
I'll be very strict.
I was very strict for my 3 minutes.
This time, I have to catch up, so we make sure that we be strict for the 3 minutes just to be able to get a chance to get the floor also to the audience.
Here, I will start with nadan.
Thank you for joining us.
You had this extensive experience with the Sahara in the Sahara Observatory, very difficult working conditions, and what we want to hear from you is really, how can we package the evidence, the monitoring results, and translate them into advocacy, policies, and decision making and concrete actions which are evidence based.
You have 3 minutes.
Thank you, moderator.
Across Africa, we have learned something very practical.
Evidence only creates value when people can use it to make decision.
We may have satellite images, monitoring data, maps, indicators, but the real question is, can a policymaker look at that evidence and decide where to act, who to prioritize, and where to invest? This is where SARA Sil Observatory has focused much of its work.
Through initiatives such MS in Africa, Adapt WA, DCA, and ETS, all those initiatives are across the African continent, we combine Earth observation, field data, and environmental monitoring with tools designed for decision making.
And that last step is essential, decision making.
A map showing land degradation is useful.
A map that helps identify where degradation is accelerating, where restoration has the greatest potential, and where intervention is most urgent becomes a decision making tool.
The same applies to our thematic atlases, environmental databases and early warning systems.
Their purpose is to make complex information understandable and usable by institutions that have to act.
We have seen this very clearly in our work on land degradation neutrality through our collaboration with the UCCD global mechanism, including in Benin and in Central African Republic.
We have supported countries in translating national targets into special priorities, measurable indicators, and implementation pathways.
This is where evidence based advocacy begins.
Advocacy is much stronger when we can move beyond saying restoration matters and demonstrate where it matters, what the evidence tell us, and what can be achieved, and what investment can deliver.
This also changed the quality of policy dialogue.
Ministries, technical agencies, researchers and financial partners are no longer discussing restoration as only a broad environmental ambition.
They can discuss concrete territories, priorities, results, and also investment choices.
If I had to summarize the OSS experience, I would describe it as a continuum, data, then monitoring, decision, dialogue, investment, action, and impact.
Regional organizations such as OSS can help connect these different stages by bringing together national information systems, scientific knowledge, geospeal technology and decision makers, while also allowing countries to learn from one another.
The objective is make that evidence actionable so that it shapes the decision, attracts investment, and leads to restoration at scale.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good.
Thank you very much, Nadia.
I do believe there is a strong message.
If you want the evidence that we are generating to create impact, we need to make sure that we package the information properly for the stakeholders.
Yeah, let us move to Israel with the experience of the Satoyama Initiative that connects and strengthens the relationships between people and nature.
Can you share your experience on what the global platforms can learn from the local initiatives? In 3 minutes.
Thanks.
Thank you very much, first of all, inviting me to this important discussion and thank you so much, the question and the introduction for the Satoyama Initiative.
So let me begin by briefly introduce the Satoyama Initiative.
The initiative was jointly launched in 2010 at the occasion of CBD Cop ten by the government of Japan and the United Nations University.
The initiative is the vision to realize the society living in harmony with nature, and I am working as a Secretariat of the international partnership of the Satoyama Initiative.
Or EPC, International Partnership for Somar Initiative, IPC.
EPC is a global multitkeholder partnership bringing together government, local municipalities, research institutes and private sectors, also indigenous people and local communities and civil society organizations, et cetera.
So to working on what we call socio ecological production, landscape and seascape, or in short, sales.
Sples are the places, landscape and seascapes where people live and also produce food and other resources while conserving nature in a sustainable way.
So IPC's mission is to promote saps as conservation and resource production needs to be considered together with people's well being and people's culture and knowledge in an integrated way.
So far in this discussion, we have heard many important perspective on what makes the restoration work on the ground from ecological, social innovation, governance, finance, monitoring, and I believe it is essential how we connect these diverse local, national experience globally.
So restoration ultimately happened on the ground and the successful solution are context dependent.
But global multi stakeholder platform enables us to share lesson, learn, good experience, generate and share knowledge and build and strengthen partnership and connect local experience with national and international policies.
So the different landscape has different community and different ecosystem, social context.
And what we can scale is that such mutual learning and principles and partnerships and enable conditions that allow us to local innovation bundles to realize.
This is what EPC has been working on through its global network sharing case studies, collaborative activities, and knowledge generation.
We see strong potential for EPC to provide such connections and we are very looking forward to work with you participating in this discussion to scale up this nature restoration efforts globally.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
Ha I appreciate it.
The local experience is very instrumental for global processes, and we always say from local from global to local to make sure that we can be able to implement the lessons we learned at the global scale as well.
So let me go to Bit in terms of as a research scientist.
Really, how can the restoration innovation bundles remain? We said that everything changed really when the landscape actors are actively involved.
How can they remain community led and be on local solutions, but still be investable? Thank you.
Thank you for also inviting me to speak here.
I think we have to look back here a little bit into the history.
So I had everything prepared on my laptop.
I'm going to say something different now.
So after listening to you.
So I've been working in this sector for 25 years.
And since 25 years, I'm confronted with the same question.
Why can't we get people to adopt? Why is there land degradation? Why is there environmental degradation? And can you hear the negativity in this? It's all about problems, and it's all about deficits, and it's all about a narrative that seeks the problem in a local population.
We farmers, with herders, with pastoralists.
So we're placing the problem, we're placing the deficit that we see from the outside with the people who are the ones most suffering from what we are framing as a problem.
So why on earth and I come from a farming community.
My entire family are farmers, small scale farmers.
Why would I as a farmer, create such a problem for myself and then sit back and do nothing about it? Now, tell me, does that make any sense to you? Not really.
So why are we looking at it from that point of view? Because narratives are simple stories that are easy to tell, easy to grasp and easy to sell.
But they're not necessarily the truth.
So for example, a very simple narrative that I often hear is, we have great technologies, and apologies, colleagues, if you said what I'm going to before, what I'm going to say now.
We have great technologies, we have innovations, hundreds, thousands of them.
So how are we going to get people to adopt? Oh, we're going to create awareness and train people, and then they're going to adopt.
How many people in this room have been successful with this strategy in the long term? I don't think many of us.
The core of this problem is something that I wrote down earlier while I was listening.
It's about power.
The wider the gap in power is, the harder it is to trust and find a common ground.
Who do I trust as a farmer? I trust my neighbor.
I trust my uncle who is also a farmer, I trust my friend who's a farmer.
This is what my team has been working with for a few years now with this principle that people prefer to learn from each other rather than being told from the outside.
So we are using tools like farmer to farmer field days.
That actually means that a farmer is teaching another farmer, not just the man, by the way, it's the entire family.
It's the husband, the wife, the youth, the elderly people, the laborers, all of them are involved in organizing such field days.
And what are they talking about? My innovations? My technologies? No.
They're talking about their own innovations because these innovations are already there.
In every community in the world, you will find people who have solutions.
People are not waiting, they're not waiting for us.
Not everyone is doing restoration, but you will find somebody in every community.
If you find these people, work with them, help them to tell other people about their solutions, you'll achieve much more sustainable impact that is also investable.
Thank you very much, Brigit, and I was expecting it.
I think the peer to peer learning is very critical as we are learning from each other.
The communities also needs to learn from each other to make significant impact.
Now let us move on.
I guess everyone here in the room has been one or another day in the bank to look for a loan.
It is always challenging to get one for several reasons that we don't always understand.
So we are happy, Chris to have you from the Asian Development Bank.
And the question is simple.
How countries can access trade off and be able to measure results and also monitor everything so that they can be able to position restoration for investment and be able to gain loans from banks similar to yours.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much.
And first of all, it's wonderful to be here today in this really amazing venue.
We really are under the blue skies of Mongolia here.
It's very, very nice.
Sunshine stopped raining.
And actually, I work mainly in the public sector rather than private sector of the Asian Development Bank, looking at investment in nature based solutions.
And first of all, the first thing for countries to do in terms of looking at restoration is protect existing habitats and make sure that these are not destroyed as the first thing.
In terms of restoration, there are a number of things we need to do.
First of all, we need to win the economic arguments.
We've all heard of the $1 equals $40 in benefits.
But if it was that easy, there would be a significant investment, both public and private sector into ecosystem restoration.
So we really need to think a little bit out of the box, working with natural capital accounting, looking at land use planning, really building the the community, the landscape, the capacity of the government, understanding of the government, communities and private sector to understand the value of ecosystem restoration is significant, all the different multiple benefits, but it needs really to be quantified and to really get inside the investment planning of the Ministry of Finance, who ADB is the key stakeholder.
Secondly, we need to build government capacity.
So investment readiness starts with institutional readiness.
We can't just dump lots of money on ministries or countries.
There really needs to be the capacity in the government in the communities in the ministry.
Sometimes they have to adopt new technologies, they have to new approaches.
We had some speakers talk about landscape approaches.
For many institutions and ministries, this is actually quite an innovative transformational approach.
Working with different ministry is not always easy.
And land degradation does not respect administrative boundaries.
We have to look at agriculture forests and get people to not work in a silo.
And the third thing is that partnerships can provide the technical backbone, and this is where powerful partnerships can be undertaken where Asian Development Bank or other banks work with organizations like CJAR to bring in the technical backbone and skills to understand drought analysis or soil restoration of forestry.
And ADB has several examples of this where we bring in a To technical capacity with the Nature Solutions Finance Hub, where we're working with WWF, ICN and TNC.
We also have a partnership with the CJAR which I think is fairly recent, but also gives the potential to bring in extra skills and evidence.
And a good example is a partnership that we're announcing next week called Finance and Integrated ecosystems and landscapes for Development, where we're looking at restoring rangelands, grasslands, and other dryland ecosystems.
And technical partners can help determine what works and governments, we need them on board with the economic argument to really push and take on board loans and grants and financial institutions that ADB can help scale it up.
We also need you'd mentioned about tracking and measuring.
This is a big issue.
I don't have an easy answer here, but a lot of um projects, governments talk about number of trees.
Ethiopia, I was part of the Guinness World Record, where there was, I think it was it 4 billion seedlings planted in one day.
How many of them survived? I don't know.
So we really need to think about not just planting trees, but growing trees and making sure that the other factors like water, soil, communities livelihood are also measured.
And yeah, those are some examples of how we can start thinking about scaling up kind of Thank you very much, Chris.
I think capacity building and partnership will help us to get more financing from you.
Please, you can stay here so we will continue the discussion.
We have not used our budget the best I wanted, but we are still okay, we can survive.
We just need to borrow a bit.
Now we are going to go to audience engagement.
But before I start opening the floor to the audience, I just want to give a hint or a tip to the panelists.
You are eight of you and each of you have 30 seconds, not right now, but at the end, and this is the question I want you to prepare before you start answering.
In one keyword, In under 30 seconds, what code to action would you offer to U NCC parties to advance investable landscapes? I will do like I used to do when I was teaching at high school.
I repeat my question because it is very important for you so that you get it right.
In one keyword, under 30 seconds, what code to action would you offer? UN CCD parties to advance investable landscapes.
Now, I will turn to the audience.
We have something like five to 10 minutes, so it's open to you.
You can either ask a question to one of the panelists or to all of them, or you can even decide to share your experience in terms of what you have been doing with respect to scaling bundles of innovations and mobilizing resources for landscape restoration.
The floor is yours.
Thank you so much.
My question to the bank.
Since a few years ago, we are still on the invested gives 2017, 20, 34, whatever, according to the landscape.
You just started the response saying that it's not that much straight forward.
Could you please develop more on that? Because if it was straightforward, why are all public private sector money would not be invested.
Is it because it's a long term process or because we are not sure about that, or because of the incomes are not that much concrete so that it could be more complicated.
I'm really interested and curious to hear about that.
Thank you.
I think I said, it's not straightforward.
It's complicated.
The rewards are often socioeconomic benefits like water resources are not often quantified in a country.
Maybe some of the models are smaller, small scale.
But actually, when you aggregate them, they're actually quite huge.
Agroforestry restoration and household investment is quite tiny.
But if you think of the number of potential cocoa farmers looking at sustainable forestry in Indonesia, if you amalgamated them together, it would be an enormous investment.
I think also governments, they have a lot of things to think about trade offs.
They have a lot of things to think about these days, not just ecosystems, governments often only in for four years or so.
So they have short term thinking, whereas ecosystem restoration can take many, many years.
All these people here in the room of the experience in looking at this.
So time is also a problem because often banks, financial institutions, governments, they're thinking short term rather than at the long term.
So it's really about building the new thinking of the government ministries and the politicians who control public resources and also the private sector.
I hope that helps.
It's a quite big question though.
This over there.
Thank you, moderator.
My name is someone from Burundi.
In the Burundi landscape restoration has become a priority for combating land degradation, improving food security, and strength resilience to climate change.
Under the FA 100 initiative, the country has committed to restoring approximately 2 million hectares of the British land by 2050.
Several program, notably the landscape Restoration and resilience project supported by the World Bank and the global environment facility are implementing mesals such as reforestation, reforestation, agro forestry, water sheet protection and soil restoration, E P financing plays across your whole by mobilizing resources for projects where outcomes are measured using scientific data, remote sensing and socioeconomic indicators.
Initiative like Telefun also provides funding the local organization pads on demonstrated impacts such as Hector roster it, treat, plant, carbon secure street, and improving community incomes.
In this way, Burn is transforming landscape restoration innovation into credible investor attractive action backed by concrete evidence of the environment, economic and social benefits.
Thank you.
Great.
Thank you very much for sharing.
And we are really think about exchange across landscapes.
We had a lot of example from Spain, from India, from Tunisia, now from Burundi and other places and rear our dams to make sure how do we do exchange visit so that we can share more experience.
I will give it just the last one, please, Ana, you can take the floor in 30 seconds and we will have 30 seconds to get back to you.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Yes, 30 seconds.
Hello, I'm Jason Levy from Ile.
Some of my like minded colleagues are here on stage.
I had a comment to make that it's really key to link restoration to improved livelihoods because this is the incentive, this is the motivation for producers to continue good management in the future sustainably, of course.
How do we do that? It means we need to avoid areas that are undergraded, leave those and protect them, prevent them from being degraded, focus on areas that are sensitive to restoration and responsive that can prove to provide that role in livelihoods.
Then areas that are extremely degraded, we need to accept that degradation that it may not be cost effective to solve it in the short term because it's unlikely to contribute to livelihoods, especially if it's not cost effective.
If anyone would like to hear more about this tomorrow, we have an event in MED three with the Science Policy Interface Committee.
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
It's a comment, we can move on with the last one, then we go back to the panelists.
Thank you, Kaag.
So let me introduce myself.
My name is Anand, and I'm representing Iris at Hydrabad.
So, a very fascinating discussion is going on.
So like at Tksat we are working on landscape restoration since 1972 in a very small scale.
And then we have moved out of our campus in 2000 sorry, 1999, with the help of ADB in a small watershed called Katapiashed in Anand.
Since then, we have taken the lessons, and then we have been working recently in the Bunkan region of Uttar Pradesh of one of the state in India, where we have been working since 2009 with a small watershed called Parasis in the watershed with the help of the Coca Cola India Foundation.
And then with that experience, we have extended our interventions to all the seven districts of this Bundkan region.
So now we are covering almost 28,000 hectares of one landscape, where we are implementing bundle of solutions to restore this landscape.
One of the lesson, what we learned is that when you're talking about landscape restoration, so you have to diagnose the landscape first.
We have to identify what is the problems are existing.
And then that too with the help of the community because we cannot like we are the scientists we are the research organizations.
We cannot go and then identify ourselves with the problem.
We may identify some problems, but that is suited to our research areas and all.
You're taking into competence and then also the cooperation of farming families.
They will really identify what is really needed for restoring these landscapes.
Accordingly, you intervene the bundles of solutions, and then those bundles of solutions definitely will help and in that context, partnership creates an important role.
Thank you so much.
Great.
Appreciate it.
Now we go to the panelists starting from Victoria exactly three sequence maximum.
Okay.
I'll be quicker than that.
To the UN CCD parties, I would say support locally led integrated landscape approaches to build vertical coherence.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Just one message create some measurable mechanism for the productive capacity of the landscape over the time.
Simplify landscape governance playbooks for mass consumption.
My call to action is simple, bring the field to the stage.
Tell the stories from the ground, give those stories faces, speak more about what is happening in the field, even about challenges and less about processes and strategies.
Because advancing landscape also means showing that approach are feasible, realistic, delivering results and can be replicated elsewhere.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
EPC as a global network could provide the CCD member states parties for the global dialogue platform that enable to communicate not only the country parties but all the stakeholders to leverage every effort to leverage synergies for the collective impact even bigger than the isolated action.
Actually, the president of the CCD Cop 70, the Ministry of the Mongolia is a member of the EPC.
I think I believe it's helpful to invite the CCD parties and as well as multi stakeholders to discuss to realize the hole society approach.
Thank you.
So I'd say put communities in the driver's seat when it comes to investment.
Every investment must either build on or create income opportunities and facilitate investment from within rather than from the outside only.
Thank you.
We can provide finance, but it's not only a finance gap.
There's a lot more things need to be done.
So we'd look for technical and institutional partnerships to really drive restoration and make it work with governments.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I would invite the audience to assist me with the round of applause to all the different panelists.
Good.
Thank you very much, everyone.
First of all, you have done a good job assisting me to manage the time because I was worried with eight panelists with the time I have how I could be able to manage.
But we have been able to hear from you and also get the opportunity to hear from the audience.
Now, I will not be able to anticipate what Wagaki is going to tell us in her concluding remarks.
But one thing I can assume is from what we have heard from all of you and also the contributions from the audience, there is a lot of variable ideas and insights that could lead the different parties really to improve in terms of how they position themselves to invest in landscapes.
I really look forward to continuous engagement with all of you beyond the scope.
Now I invite Agaki for the concluding remarks.
In Agaki, I will not attempt to present you, introduce yourself and give us your concluding remarks, please.
Thanks.
Okay.
Thank you so much for such an interesting panel.
My name is Wagaki Wynevski.
I work for the United Nations Convention to Combat desertification, specifically the G 20 Global and Initiative, and I'm the communications lead of that initiative.
It was very interesting.
I'm going to be very, very brief.
We began with a definition of what that I stands for, what scaling means, what landscapes mean, what innovation means, what bundling means.
If you're not here, that's where we began and we got a very good understanding of what that is.
We then moved on to talk about what kind of models, what is the model the model that we're talking about here that would be a solution.
Why? Because land degradation is a systemic problem.
It involves a lot of issues.
It's not one shot and then you've resolved the issue.
You're dealing with water, you're dealing with people, you're dealing with jobs, you're dealing with farming, whatever.
It's a lot.
You have to think about what kind of model really works.
We had very different models that were presented.
What came across for me was that all of these models, which were very different by the way, but very rich, four or five things to doubt.
One, think about the people.
Think about the people that are going to be impacted or that you're looking to change.
Let's talk about that looking to change because you are somebody who said, Why do we even want to change people? Because why would anyone be investing against themselves or acting against themselves? People are first.
Second thing, you have to think about the science.
What have you understood from the science that needs to be done on the ground.
Third thing, it's not going to work if people cannot support their livelihoods.
You have to think about jobs, you have to think about the economy, and then you have to think about what kind of a business model is it? Is it one that is actually changing stuff on the ground? Is it a prototype that needs to be tested and scaled? You've done a small thing and now you can scale in that area, or is it a prototype that can be expanded or used somewhere else? You have to think about these things.
That was the construction part of it.
So New interventions owned by people that provide interests of all people.
You cannot succeed if you're looking only after the interests of one group.
Everybody must get something, even if it's small, they must feel that they're getting something.
I think that's a good policy approach that I've heard about.
Then we move.
You have the evidence.
You have the evidence.
How do you move from what you have and what you have achieved to present it to the Asian development bank so that they can think, this we can take.
This was the second question.
I had, I think four or five major things that came out of this.
One, think about the context and how the different parts that you're dealing with are working.
You cannot take a model and just apply it.
You have to make sure that every part fits within the context you're working in.
Second thing, make sure, and again, I'm repeating myself, you will hear that.
Make sure I'll be done.
Make sure that livelihoods are well taken care of.
Nobody's going to do this for free.
Third thing, there are trade offs.
There will be trade offs, so be aware of that and accept them, but make these trade offs visible to the government because there are so many competing demands, it helps them to know where to invest.
Um, Oh, no, that was part of the first presentation.
The second presentation is where we talked about how to package this evidence, to make it advocacy oriented and to help the banks.
Um, the advice is evidence that's actionable is best for advocacy.
It's not just a question of saying that we can restore land, but where, why, how the five Ws questions, you need to ask those so that governments can make a decision.
Second, mutual learning, is essential and whether you call it mutual learning or peer to peer learning is important.
Third thing, think about the power dynamics because the further you are away from the center of power, the less stress is going to be prioritize close learning.
However, I think you mentioned you alluded to it, but you didn't quite bring it out, is that you also need to think about who are the movers and shakers in that peer group because that might be your entry point.
Last thing, track and measure.
Evidence that is actionable, you must be able to track it and measure it.
Whether it's on the ground, whether it's on investment, you need to track it and measure it.
This is my closing remark.
I thought it was a very rich discussion, and then there are calls to action.
Those are for you and CCD, so I've written those down.
I'll take them home.
I wanted to ask a question that was raised, but I think not tackled.
Somebody said the measure of GDP might not be the best thing.
I was asking myself, because we're in this model and in this technology that measures wealth in terms of GDP, how do we move from that lock to a different lock of where we want to go? That's my concluding remark.
Ladies and gentlemen, back to the chair.
Thank you very much.
With this, we are done and we have been able to respect our time for the others who are coming in.
We didn't exaggerate like sometimes it happened.
So anyone who wish to be part of our photo, please join us.
Let's do a Thank you.