The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) is the world’s largest knowledge-led platform on sustainable, inclusive landscapes and on integrated land use, dedicated to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement. The Forum takes a holistic approach to create sustainable landscapes that are productive, prosperous, equitable and resilient and considers five cohesive themes of food and livelihoods, landscape restoration, rights, finance and measuring progress. It is led by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), in collaboration with its co-founders UNEP and the World Bank and Charter Members.
Sustainable landscapes are essential for the future we want: for food, livelihoods, health, renewable materials, energy, biodiversity, business development, trade, climate regulation and water.
The GLF is dedicated to the landscape approach. It is at the landscape level that production goals, consumption needs and protection targets can be combined, and that people are organized and ready to restore billions of hectares of idle, degraded land. The landscape approach can protect and conserve biodiversity-rich landscapes; tackle insecure tenure, community and gender rights; address food insecurity and declining rural livelihoods; and promote sustainable value chains and sustainable use of natural resources.
As a global community and working together, we can find the right tools to support locally-led landscape action and measure the progress.
The GLF works to catalyze a movement that puts communities first in informing and addressing landscape-level issues. We broker connections across sectors and scales. We provide a platform for often-marginalized voices from communities around the globe, especially for women, youth, and rural, Indigenous and local communities. These groups experience disproportionate impacts of environmental, health and social crises and also hold the greatest potential for solving these crises.
Cross-cutting themes of the GLF include rights (gender, tenure, community and Indigenous), foods and livelihoods, landscape restoration, financing sustainable landscapes and measuring progress towards climate and development goals.
The vision of the GLF is to promote the paradigm shift toward sustainable development and meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and the post-2020 biodiversity agenda by connecting communities; facilitating knowledge sharing; and accelerating action to build productive, prosperous, equitable and resilient landscapes.
The GLF enables an effective and progressive response to the climate crisis based on the best available science and knowledge, and actively contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.