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Key Messages:

1. Underrated peatlands: While mangroves receive significant attention in climate policies, coastal peatlands are often overlooked. Despite their substantial carbon stocks, only a few countries include peatland-related actions in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), presenting a gap in global climate strategies.
2. Opportunities in the Caribbean: The Caribbean region, home to both mangroves and coastal peatlands, holds promise for climate action. Seven countries stand out for potential peatland and mangrove conservation efforts, with a focus on mitigation and adaptation measures.
3. Priority actions: Priority actions in the identified region include mapping peatlands, establishing monitoring systems for greenhouse gas fluxes and biodiversity, and piloting conservation and restoration projects. These initiatives aim to enhance awareness, capacity, and technology for effective wetland management and climate resilience.

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Key Messages

1. Preserving peatlands: Paludiculture aims to conserve peat by maintaining high water tables, which are crucial for inhibiting decomposition and facilitating peat formation. By cultivating facultative or obligate wetland plants, paludiculture fosters conditions conducive to peat conservation.
2. Sustainable utilization: While harnessing biomass for economic purposes, paludiculture ensures the sustainability of peatlands. By selectively harvesting aboveground biomass and avoiding disturbance to underground parts, it minimizes disruptions to peat formation processes, thereby promoting long-term sustainability.
3. Diverse applications: Paludiculture encompasses various agricultural systems, including permanent grassland and cropping techniques. These methods not only offer economic opportunities but also contribute to nature conservation objectives, provided careful consideration is given to regional regulations and species selection to prevent adverse environmental impacts.

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Key Messages

1. Climate guardians: Peatlands store immense carbon reserves, crucial for climate stability, yet over 10% are already drained worldwide, releasing significant greenhouse gases annually.
2. Biodiversity hotspots: Drained peatlands not only threaten climate balance but also endanger unique habitats and species specially adapted to these environments, highlighting the critical need for conservation.
3. Call to Action: The atlas provides a roadmap for peatland protection and restoration, advocating for wetland conservation strategies and promoting paludiculture as a sustainable alternative, urging decisive action from policymakers and society.

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Peatlands are vital ecosystems, yet they face widespread degradation due to human activities such as agriculture and forestry. Recognizing their crucial role in climate regulation, international frameworks like the Convention on Wetlands advocate for their restoration. This Ramsar Technical Report serves as a beacon for regional planners, site managers, and policymakers, offering extensive guidance on peatland rewetting and restoration.

Key Messages

1. Global imperative: The Paris Agreement underscores the necessity to rewet nearly all drained peatlands globally, totaling over 50 million hectares, to mitigate climate change effectively.
2. Complete rewetting: Failure to fully rewet degraded peatlands leads to ongoing carbon emissions and eventual environmental collapse, emphasizing the urgency for comprehensive restoration efforts.
3. Conservation priority: While restoration is crucial, it cannot fully restore lost values. Thus, prioritizing conservation is paramount, ensuring the preservation of essential ecosystem functions.

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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 Musonda Mumba

Get inspired by the vision of Musonda Mumba, secretary general of the Convention on Wetlands. Born in Zambia, Dr. Mumba is an environmentalist with 25+ years of global expertise in environmental management and sustainable development. Formerly with the UN Development Programme and UN Environment Programme, she is a recognized leader and founder of the Network of African Women Environmentalists (NAWE). Dr. Mumba holds a PhD in Wetland Hydrology and Conservation from University College London (UCL) and is recognized globally for her influential work in conservation.

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Restoration in action

Curious about what GLF’s restoration practitioners are up to? Whether they’re planting trees, recovering coral reefs, connecting stakeholders or creating local communities, tune in to learn about the GLF Restoration Alliance and what Restoration Stewards and GLF chapters are doing to restore our planet as part of a global effort during the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

The Global Landscape Forum (GLF) and its partners are proud to announce their joint initiative, Generation Restoration, aimed at addressing the climate crisis and its impact on societies, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The GLF, in collaboration with local communities, is launching five new chapters of the Geofx Network in the Sahel region, focusing on regenerative and equitable land use and food system models.

The GLF recognizes the critical role of local communities as custodians of the land, and their involvement is key to ensuring sustainable land use and restoration efforts. Through the Restoration Alliance, community-led and action-oriented groups are working together to scale landscape sustainability and contribute to global ecosystem restoration efforts.

During the GLF events, two speakers, Anali Gustos and Laura Muquana, shared their experiences as a Restoration Steward and a GLF chapter coordinator, respectively. Anali’s focus on forest restoration in Argentina stems from witnessing the rapid loss of forest cover in her region. She aims to find nature-based solutions that reconcile forest conservation with food production.

On the other hand, Laura and her team at GLF Nairobi work towards youth-led collective landscape restoration. They strive to simplify the concept of landscape restoration and create a knowledge base to empower youth to take action. Their achievements include organizing a national landscape restoration conference in Kenya and establishing a network to support youth and women in restoration efforts.

The GLF recognizes the potential of traditional leaders in driving forest landscape restoration, as they hold influence and authority over their communities. Initiatives like the Traditional Leaders Landscape Forum aim to bring together technocrats and traditional leaders to engage communities further in restoration activities.

Overall, the GLF’s commitment to Generation Restoration, collaboration with local communities, and support for traditional leaders highlight the collective effort needed to address the environmental challenges posed by the climate crisis. By empowering local change agents, the GLF aims to make positive impacts on landscapes and create a sustainable future for all.

About GLF Climate 2021

Hosted digitally and in Glasgow alongside COP26, the GLF Climate 2021 hybrid conference made a unanimous call for ambitious, concrete action to stop the climate crisis.

Attended by 4,386 digital participants from 145 countries, along with 481 in-person participants at the University of Glasgow, the event featured 400 leading scientists, activists, Indigenous leaders, financiers, youth, and government leaders.

Across 67 plenaries, interactive sessions, launches, and climate talks, GLF Climate: Forests, Food, Finance – Frontiers of Change explored the potential of three key climate solutions: forest restoration, resilient food systems, and sustainable finance. Messages spread on social media rallied 41.34 million people around concrete ways to address the climate emergency as quickly as possible.

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Bernardo Strassburg, Coordinator of the Centre for Conservation and Sustainability Science (CSRio) and Executive Director of the International Institute for Sustainability, talks us through key findings from his most recent study, “Global priority areas for ecosystem restoration”, published in Nature magazine in 14th October 2020.

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