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About GLF Nairobi 2023: ‘A new Vision for Earth’

The GLF Nairobi 2023 Hybrid Conference, held on October 11 and 12, convened global thought leaders to set the stage for COP28, the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference. This pivotal event mobilised action on critical issues affecting humanity, biodiversity, and our planet.

The conference featured two focused days: Day 1 centered on “Africa’s Sovereign Solutions,” exploring pathways to a sustainable and prosperous future for the continent. Day 2, dedicated to climate, aimed to craft a “Survival Guide for a Planet in Crisis,” paving the way for a fairer world ahead of COP28.

GLF Nairobi brought together a diverse coalition of influential voices, ranging from scientists, activists, and Indigenous leaders to financiers, women, youth, policymakers, and private sector representatives. As a united front, we collectively championed change and passionately advocated for meaningful action in these pivotal times.

About Rodrigo Medellín

Dive into the world of Rodrigo Medellín as he unveils his vision for Earth, urging us all to engage and ‘talk to your neighbor’ for a sustainable and interconnected future.

Rodrigo Medellín, a prominent figure in Mexican mammal ecology and conservation, has dedicated over 30 years to studying and safeguarding his home country’s diverse wildlife, with a particular focus on bats. With a multidisciplinary approach integrating community ecology, plant-animal interactions, population biology and molecular ecology, he has earned a PhD from the University of Florida after graduating from UNAM.

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About GLF Nairobi 2023: ‘A new Vision for Earth’

The GLF Nairobi 2023 Hybrid Conference, held on October 11 and 12, convened global thought leaders to set the stage for COP28, the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference. This pivotal event mobilised action on critical issues affecting humanity, biodiversity, and our planet.

The conference featured two focused days: Day 1 centered on “Africa’s Sovereign Solutions,” exploring pathways to a sustainable and prosperous future for the continent. Day 2, dedicated to climate, aimed to craft a “Survival Guide for a Planet in Crisis,” paving the way for a fairer world ahead of COP28.

GLF Nairobi brought together a diverse coalition of influential voices, ranging from scientists, activists, and Indigenous leaders to financiers, women, youth, policymakers, and private sector representatives. As a united front, we collectively championed change and passionately advocated for meaningful action in these pivotal times.

About this session

The session showcased the CompensACTION initiative, which was launched under the German G7 presidency in 2022 and aims to give agricultural producers adequate compensation for their work. It especially seeks to help smallholders in developing countries earn a living income by selling their produce and being paid for the ecosystem services they provide.

The session presents evidence from pilot projects, share experiences from partners on payment for ecosystem services schemes, and showcase opportunities for new partnerships. Experts covered financing and incentives for low emissions development. The session also addressed challenges faced by people with disabilities in project implementation and highlighted the importance of inclusivity and support for vulnerable groups.

Resources

• Rethinking inorganic fertiliser subsidies;
• Compensating farmers for ecosystem services

The post CompensACTION: Mobilizing finance through innovative payment for ecosystem services schemes appeared first on Global Landscapes Forum.

About GLF Nairobi 2023: ‘A new Vision for Earth’

The GLF Nairobi 2023 Hybrid Conference, held on October 11 and 12, convened global thought leaders to set the stage for COP28, the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference. This pivotal event mobilized action on critical issues affecting humanity, biodiversity, and our planet.

The conference featured two focused days: Day 1 centered on “Africa’s Sovereign Solutions,” exploring pathways to a sustainable and prosperous future for the continent. Day 2, dedicated to climate, aimed to craft a “Survival Guide for a Planet in Crisis,” paving the way for a fairer world ahead of COP28.

GLF Nairobi brought together a diverse coalition of influential voices, ranging from scientists, activists, and Indigenous leaders to financiers, women, youth, policymakers, and private sector representatives. As a united front, we collectively championed change and passionately advocated for meaningful action in these pivotal times.

About this session

African ecosystems offer a wide range of essential services, including timber, meat, water and medicines, and play a key role in global systems, including biodiversity and climate regulation. Scientific knowledge is key to maintaining all these systems. However, many African countries lack this knowledge or the capacity to sustainably manage ecosystem resources. A number of regional observatories and regional coordination bodies have been created to support research and generate knowledge to support decision making.

This session, hosted by CIFOR-ICRAF, brought together observatory experts with the heads of regional institutions and other stakeholders to discuss the role of regional observatories in sustainably managing the continent’s ecosystems.

Resources

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• PES Benefits for Farmers: Boosts income diversification, encourages sustainable practices, and supports climate action.
• CompensACTION Initiative Objectives: Enhance farmer incomes, promote sustainable farming, provide co-benefits, diversify funding, and attract climate finance.
• Levers for Scaling: Innovate PES for affordability, blend public-private finance, and enable implementation readiness.
• G7 Leadership: Lead PES efforts to improve livelihoods, ensure food security, and address climate goals while promoting policy reforms and research.

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) to smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) can increase and diversify farmers’ income while also incentivizing practices for ecosystem services, including climate change mitigation and adaptation. The world’s 480 million smallholder farmers produce one third of the world’s food supply on one quarter of global agricultural area and often earn less than USD 1.25/day. Yet schemes for paying smallholder farmers in LMICs for ecosystem services have been limited.

The CompensACTION Initiative seeks to promote PES innovation at large scales to increase the incomes of smallholder farmers in LMICs while incentivizing climate action and environmental outcomes. The Initiative has five objectives:

1. Increase and diversify the incomes of smallholder men and women farmers, while also supporting long-term investment by farmers.
2. Incentivize practices for sustainable farming practices that lead to resilient and low-emission food systems, as well as other ecosystem services on- and off-farm.
3. Deliver co-benefits with compensation mechanisms such as improved credit ratings and easy access to finance for farmers.
4. Diversify financial instruments and increase public and private funding in addition to climate finance.
5. Attract international climate finance for adaptation and mitigation action in the agricultural sector that leads to improved ecosystem services maintenance.

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• Poor soil quality in southern Africa requires inorganic fertilizers, but their impact is limited.
• Malawi’s fertilizer subsidy program falls short due to declining soil health; solutions involve diversification and organic practices.
• Enhancing soil health through subsidies, carbon finance, private sector involvement, and digital tools can promote sustainable agriculture.

Could ‘payments for soil health services’ be an option in Malawi?

In many parts of southern Africa, soil quality is poor due to weathering and low nutrient content. Inorganic fertilizers are often necessary, but their effectiveness can be limited. Malawi’s fertilizer subsidy program isn’t achieving food security goals due to declining soil health.

Solutions like crop diversification, organic matter addition, and fertilizers can help, but challenges exist. Improving soil health has benefits for nutrition and climate resilience. Payments for ecosystem services could support soil health, alongside other actions. Possibilities include redirecting subsidies, better extension services, diversifying crops, tying subsidies to soil health, and linking to carbon finance. Private sector involvement, affordable lime, and digital tools could also play roles.

Payments for ecosystems services (PES) to smallholder farmers could be a possible mechanism to incentivise soil health practices

PES is widely used for water, biodiversity and carbon services. The global initiative CompensACTION seeks to promote PES innovation at large scales to facilitate positive environmental outcomes.

In Malawi, PES could be used for soil health services. Such payments could help to incentivise sustainable agriculture practices, which would facilitate climate change adaptation and mitigation (the latter through carbon sequestration), increase and diversify farmer incomes, and possibly improve credit ratings and easier access to finance for farmers. Payments for carbon sequestration are likely too small to stimulate change by themselves but cobenefits may be large.

Farms in Malawi are small and the additional carbon sequestered through soils or agroforestry would likely bring in very small payments to farmers, but the co-benefits of such schemes may still be attractive.

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The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030 recognizes the critical need to prevent, halt, and reverse the degradation of the world’s ecosystems. Effective restoration of degraded ecosystems is of paramount importance for recovering biodiversity, ecosystem health and integrity, ecosystem goods and services, climate-change mitigation, and human health and well-being.

UN Decade partners, through a consultative process, offered ten principles for ecosystem restoration to create a shared vision and increase the likelihood of achieving the highest level of recovery possible.

To facilitate the application of these principles to restoration projects, the Standards of Practice to guide ecosystem restoration provide key recommendations for the entire restoration process, which can be applicable across all sectors of society, land or sea uses, ecosystems, and regions, and to the broad array of ecosystem restoration activities under the UN Decade. The goal of this document is to provide an overview of the Standards of practice.

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About the Rewilding Community of Practice

The Rewilding Community of Practice aims to build a network of rewilding enthusiasts and professionals who can exchange ideas and information to help build a better world.

The virtual community gathering ‘Fascinating Fungi: Invisible Allies in Rewilding’ held on Tuesday, the 22nd of November 2022, aimed to bring a fantastic opportunity for rewilders to learn more about the incredible role fungi play in rewilding – and how to rewild mycological networks – from three experienced practitioners who work on turning these invisible allies into a visible force for good.

About the speakers

David Satori, Founder of Rewilding Mycology

David Satori is a mycologist, consultant, and the founder of Rewilding Mycology. He holds a MSc in Plant and Fungal Taxonomy, Diversity, and Conservation. He is a former Species Conservation Researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew where he contributed to IUCN Red List assessments of tropical plant species.

David has extensive experience designing fungal surveys, generating baseline data, and recognising opportunities for fungal conservation on sites with various land use histories. He draws from his experience at Kew Gardens, where he managed large databases on plant documentation, distribution, population trends, and threats. He will introduce the field of rewilding mycology , highlight the importance of science being fungi-inclusive and discuss recent strides in the field.

Michael Hathaway, Professor at World Matsutake Research Group – Simon Fraser University

Michael Hathaway is a cultural anthropologist working in China for over a quarter century on two major topics. His first project explored how global conservation programs were re-configured by Chinese scientists, villagers and wild animals (such as Asian elephants), and his second examines the role of fungi in reshaping economies and ecologies on a vast scale.

He will speak about a mindset shift the world urgently needs: a shift from viewing other organisms as objects of utility (as things to be eaten, commodified or even used in rewilding projects) to fellow beings that are also worldmakers. What might it mean to recognize the presence and power of fungi all around us, especially from this different perspective?, he asks.

Bethan Manley, Program Manager Global Data Science at SPUN

Bethan began studying underground fungal networks during a Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge examining Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi and their genetic interactions with crop plants. She has since continued work on the genomics of symbiotic fungi as a Postdoctoral Researcher, and worked as a Senior Computer Biologist at the Sanger Institute, UK, on the Tree of Life Project that aims to sequence all eukaryotic species on Earth.

Bethan now works for SPUN | Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, a non-profit initiative that aims to map, understand, and conserve underground mycorrhizal fungal networks. She will speak about the awe-inspiring work the SPUN team does of mapping underground mycorrhizal networks that regulate the Earth’s climate, and the advocacy and innovation work the organization do to protect and preserve our underground fungi kingdom.

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Presented by Tom Durang and Peter de Haan, both Senior Experts in Agriculture, and Sustainable Forest landscapes at Form International during the 6th GLF Investment Case Symposium.

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The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is an initiative led by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, which aims to drive the restoration of one billion hectares of degraded land between now and 2030.

The UN Decade is a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems around the world, for the benefit of people and nature. Only with healthy ecosystems can we enhance people’s livelihoods, counteract climate change, and stop the collapse of biodiversity. The UN Decade Finance Task Force (FTF), chaired by the World Bank, aims to catalyze action which can contribute to unlocking the capital needed to meet the Decade’s goals. ‘Unlocking Restoration Finance: A Stocktake Report’ is the first in a series of outputs of the FTF.

This report provides an overview of the current challenges and opportunities for increasing public and private investment in restoration. It looks at innovative approaches to financing restoration activities taken by actors in the public, private, or non-profit sectors and the potential for these to be replicated or scaled. The report also lays out a draft roadmap of actions the FTF will take to overcome challenges and contribute to scaling investment in restoration.

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