The event will showcase the interlinkages of tree commodities across Africa within different value webs. This will bring into perspective the agronomic, value-addition and governance pathways that currently enable the achievement of sustainable development in Africa. Additionally, the event will highlight discussions on the nexus of restoration and conservation, and economic impact among the African countries. 

This session will discuss and highlight lessons, challenges and opportunities for enhancing the contributions of agroforestry to achieving NDCs. It will bring together practitioners from the government, research and development, and private sector to share their experiences in agroforestry practices and how the practice can be enhanced further for multiple ecological and livelihood benefits.

This session will discuss and highlight lessons, challenges, and opportunities for enhancing the contributions of forests to achieving NDCs. It will bring together practitioners from the government, research and development, and the private sector to share their experiences in agroforestry practices and how the practice can be enhanced further for multiple ecological and livelihood benefits.

In this session, we review the role and importance of data, measurement and disclosure frameworks as catalysts for greater transparency, accountability and providing pathways for better business and environmental performance in agriculture and food systems.

Using an ecosystem services perspective, we will explore how trees contribute to adaptation and how this can be used to help in measuring progress to the GGA. Forests and trees play a critical role in food and nutritional security for 1.6 billion smallholders; By providing ecosystem services and products, trees are critical to the successful adaptation of farming systems, households, and landscapes.

Forests, trees and agroforests have been proven to promote food security and ecological and livelihood resilience globally. In this session, we attempt to connect the nexus of trees, food systems, and resilience. This is informed by CIFOR-ICRAF’s work across the globe on the value of trees in enhancing the resilience of food systems, noting that increased degradation of over 40% of the global land affects food security.

Green tree commodities represent the fastest-growing land uses in Africa with huge potential to address poverty reduction and promote both ecosystems and livelihood resilience. It is estimated that tree commodities cover 100 million hectares of arable lands and impact over 150 million farmers directly and over 600 million indirectly.

Youth and Gender are mentioned in three quarters of NDCs but many times it is a throwaway phrase and it doesn’t have any meaningful implementation or money behind it! This event is a call to action for member states to pick up these and other neglected opportunities to transform Food Systems. The panel will also explore entry points for local actors to ensure their role in the practical operationalization of NDCs.

With approximately 40% of the global tropical peatlands located in Southeast Asia, there is a crucial need to reduce the impact of drained peatlands, often resulting fires, large amounts of GHG emissions, and transboundary haze in the region. Over the last 25 years, hundreds of billions of economic damages have been done at immense social costs and environmental impacts. This event will forefront a discussion on the need for investing in a haze-free ASEAN. Three experts will weigh in on topics such as the ASEAN Haze-Free Roadmap, ASEAN Investment Framework for Haze-Free Sustainable Land Management, investing in sustainable land management and the pivotal role of commercial bank finance in fostering a sustainable future.

There is tremendous value to be realized from the adoption of regenerative and forest positive agriculture that are resilient to the impact of climate change whilst simultaneously offering opportunities to sequester carbon in soils and biomass, produce co-products and services and improve the long-term productivity of forests and fields. As policy-makers around the World increasingly recognize hidden benefits and costs of business activities, they are enacting policy to price these in through mechanisms such as regulation, carbon taxes, trading.

This panel aims to discuss opportunities for implementing the goals of the Great Green Wall by engaging with local communities.

Within the Enhanced Transparency Framework, the First Biennial Transparency Reports are due in December 2024. How much transparency is needed? How are countries prepared? And how can they prepare? How can we achieve transparent monitoring for efficient, effective, and equitable climate decisions?

This session will focus on difficulties related to tropical mangrove conservation, restoration, and management by presenting Indonesia’s primary initiatives and implementation strategies aimed at enhancing mangrove ecosystem resilience and social and economic advantages to coastal communities while simultaneously contributing to national and global commitments. It will further explore the blue carbon investments, women’s empowerment in mangrove protection and restoration. It will be wrapped up with policy suggestions to foster cooperation and partnerships in the management of sustainable mangrove ecosystems.

Join a presentation on the Global Biodiversity Standard (GBS) featuring Alexandre Antonelli, Director of Science at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The presentation will focus on how the GBS can contribute to secure positive impacts for biodiversity for nature-based climate solutions.

Soil, often overlooked, is a strategic tool to improve climate resilience, food security, carbon capture and storage and a highly biodiverse asset for all who walk upon it.

Healthy soil is the very foundation of our food systems and provides several vital ecosystem services, from carbon sequestration to improving food and nutrition security. Efforts to combat desertification, to move from scarcity to prosperity, will need to consider how to scale soil health, globally. With over one third of the Earth’s surface degraded and over 3.2 billion people negatively affected by degradation, continuing business as usual is no longer an option.

The multiple crises facing the world, including deforestation and biodiversity loss, climate change, broken food systems, unsustainable value and supply chains, and extreme inequalities, have put agroforestry on the top of most consensus lists of how to successfully combat multiple in cost-effectively and in an integrated way.

This session will enhance the understanding of how sustainable agri-food and livestock systems can help mitigate the impacts of land degradation, enhance biodiversity, and play an important role in food systems transformation. 

The Global Commons, stable and resilient earth system, are increasingly at risk, and actions are needed now. Global Commons Stewardship Index (GCSI), jointly developed by Center for Global Commons (CGC) at The University of Tokyo, Yale University and SDSN, provides information on environmental stress incurred by 150 counties and emphasizes how unsustainable production systems – but also unsustainable consumption in high-income countries – drive negative impacts on the Global Commons. Taking advantage of the latest advances in trade data, environmental research, and industrial ecology, the GCSI provides detailed analyses of impacts embodied in international trade flows. The G20 presidencies of Brazil (2024) and South Africa (2025) can provide momentum for concerted global actions and further efforts to reduce negative impacts on the Global Commons.

This event will showcase initiatives that are using nature-based solutions to address the climate and biodiversity crises in holistic ways that deliver multiple co-benefits for nature, climate and people across mitigation, adaptation and addressing loss damage.

Healthy soil is the very foundation of our food systems and provides several vital ecosystem services, from carbon sequestration to improving food and nutrition security. Efforts to combat desertification, to move from scarcity to prosperity, will need to consider how to scale soil health, globally.

Cameroon, like many other countries, is actively involved in ecosystem restoration. As part of the broader Bonn Challenge, which has been implemented in Africa as AFR 100, Cameroon has made a commitment to restore 12 million hectares of land. However, transforming this commitment into reality requires the mobilization of various efforts from different sources, including academic institutions and practitioners of tree planting. In Cameroon, there are numerous tree-planting initiatives aimed at restoring degraded ecosystems such as forests, mangroves, etc.

Join us for a compelling discussion and exploration of the profound impact of nature-based solutions in shaping a sustainable, resilient, and low-carbon future in tropical Asia.

This event will allow to delve deeper into some of these aspects. A first section of keynotes will seek to draw the connections between sustainable land management and climate change from a set of different perspectives. The following expert panel will then dive deeper and provide insights into the technical aspects of harnessing the synergies between action on land and climate.

These initiatives aim to contribute to a green economy that enables indigenous, sustainable and inclusive economic development, while addressing climate change and the preservation of biodiversity in all Central Africa Forests Commission (COMIFAC) countries.

The session will call for concrete and effective action to protect and sustainably use the forests of the Congo Basin. By highlighting networks and initiatives, the aim is to promote the forests of Central Africa as a source of solutions in the fight against climate change.

Healthy soils are the foundation of sustainable and regenerative food systems and provide several vital ecosystem services. Sequestering carbon in soils, for example, can have multiple benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation, food and nutrition security, biodiversity, and water resilience. However, there are few policies that incentivize farmers to invest in practices to improve soil health. This session will build on a set of policy briefs produced in December 2022 from Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Mali, Senegal and Zambia that highlight opportunities for the inclusion of soil health and soil organic carbon (SOC) into the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

Transboundary haze has been a longstanding environmental challenge in Southeast Asia, spanning over three decades. Its impact extends not only to regional countries but also beyond, affecting human health, the economy, agriculture, the environment, and biodiversity. This event aims to initiate a dialogue on the imperative for investment and action towards achieving a haze-free ASEAN. Four experts will delve into key subjects such as the ASEAN Haze-Free Roadmap, the ASEAN Investment Framework for Haze-Free Sustainable Land Management, the Tripartite Clean Air Strategy initiative, and the crucial role of communities in addressing fire and haze issues.

The primary objective of this session is to enhance the climate finance profile in Central Africa. The aim is to redirect more funds towards the region by leveraging factors that currently contribute to the lower finance profile of Central Africa compared to other regions worldwide.

From lowering temperatures to providing renewable materials, livelihoods and employment, the world’s forests play a larger role than just cutting carbon emissions to combat climate change. Despite enormous untapped potential that all types of forests hold, much of attention in climate policy, including climate finance, has to date focused on potential of forests in carbon storage and removal, particularly in the tropics.

The side event will shed light on the interface between nature-based solutions for climate and biodiversity and circular economy and the central role of how biomass is used. It will focus on the current policy framework for biomass use and the implications for the implementation of nature-based solutions for climate and biodiversity. It will draw attention to current policy challenges at this interface as well as to Germany’s activities in both areas.

This side event is a response to this context, allowing Viet Nam to share experience, knowledge and discuss solutions to address the above-mentioned challenges. It will also provide recommendations for policy makers to promote the inclusion of coastal and marine ecosystems as part of national mitigation and adaptation goals.

What is needed to support systemic change in food production and consumption? We bring together diverse actors to present intriguing hands-on solutions and best practices for building more sustainable and climate-resilient food systems. Our speakers include policy-makers, scientists, and young farmers.

This interactive event will build on the FACT Dialogue to support sustainable trade whilst protecting people, forests and ecosystems. The event will launch the 2023 FACT Dialogue Progress Report and provide a dynamic space for ‘mini dialogues’ with FACT members inviting wider stakeholders to hear about and feed in on what governments have been discussing within the initiative.

This session organized by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare in India focuses on managing and improving soil health and agroecological approaches in Indian agriculture, especially natural farming.

NCS is ready for mass deployment and provides key adaptation advantages that technological approaches do not. We will explore the use of soils in achieving net zero by enhancing knowledge of storage potential, biodiversity benefits, and policy options to scale practices.  

This session presents a hopeful perspective of a climate resilient and nature-based future for Europe in 2120 with a focus on the potential of nature-based solutions as an essential part of a cohesive, collaborative approach towards the development of a climate resilient and nature-based future for Europe.

Despite their critical roles in sustaining people’s health and livelihoods, regulating climate, and harboring biodiversity, the global forest area continues to shrink. Since 1990, an estimated 420 million hectares of forests have been lost worldwide. Annually, an estimated 10 million hectares worldwide have been deforested from 2015 to 2020.

One of the main challenges in the fight against climate change is to mobilise science and scientists to tackle this global problem. Within the framework of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), structures such as the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) play a crucial role in providing the knowledge needed to better understand climate dynamics and the measures associated with them.

This session brings together diverse perspectives to explore the intersection of science, technology, finance, and carbon policies and standards in driving the transition to regenerative agriculture among farmers. Featuring short presentations from private market leaders, scientific experts, international carbon standard representatives, and a pioneering regenerative farmer, attendees will gain insights into the innovative strategies and opportunities for turning agricultural soils into carbon sinks.

This event aims to provide a discussion space for such a ‘Common Ground Dialogue’ at global level on shared sustainability challenges and inspire joint policy initiatives.

In a bid to reduce its carbon footprint in the food sector, the European Union has decided to reduce the deforestation linked to certain agricultural products such as palm oil, cattle, soya, coffee, cocoa, wood and rubber, as well as their derivatives such as beef, furniture and chocolate.

In this session we look at a recent initiative to better incorporate water management and aquatic foods in the principles of agroecology, placing this in the context of the role of ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) at the Green Climate Fund and in addressing climate change effects in Sri Lanka.

This session seeks to explore the food trade risks compounding with the climate crises and conflicts around the world. We will look at the current dynamics of the global food trade, interconnected food markets, and the risk that climate change, environmental degradation, economic change, and political instability pose to our food supplies.

This virtual event will showcase how team science and data driven technologies are revolutionizing the way we approach agriculture and soil health management. It will also explore groundbreaking innovations in climate smart agriculture that are shaping the future of our food systems.