The 1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People (1000L) initiative has made significant strides into its co-design, testing and demonstration phase. Advancements are coming fast because the collaboration is working directly with Landscape Partners to develop and test tools, ideas and services for radically scaling up landscape approaches to sustainable development, ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation.
To highlight these developments, 1000L’s core partners hosted a virtual partners seminar on July 29, 2021, to present what we have achieved, the direction we’re headed and to provide landscape leaders with a pathway for engaging with 1000L as co-collaborators. Participants representing the initiative’s many current and prospective partners joined the seminar to learn how to enhance their engagement and share their thoughts about 1000L’s direction moving forward.
1000L steering committee co-chairs Nigel Sizer, Rainforest Alliance’s former chief global alliance officer, and Sara Scherr, president and CEO at EcoAgriculture Partners, opened the seminar describing the interconnected and radically inclusive nature of the initiative. The group is striving to bring a coalition of actors together “to accelerate landscape and seascape efforts to sustain and restore ecosystems, build rural prosperity and confront climate change.”
Following this introduction, 1000L design teams presented their early-stage innovations. Landscape Partners that are co-designing 1000L’s components brought real-world context to these advancements. The voices of people working in landscapes worldwide included Laura Núñez Álvarez of Spain’s Altiplano Estepapario landscape (AlVelAl), who described her engagement with the Terraso Design Team. Among other projects, the team is assisting AlVelAl in identifying and using software tools for monitoring and mapping their landscape.
David Kuria, the county executive committee member of the Government of Kiambu County, Kenya, who is in charge of water, environment, energy and natural resources and the founding director of KENVO, presented next. His group is a 1000L co-design partner currently working with 1000L’s capacity-building design team. As a landscape leader with a wealth of knowledge who champions the Landscape Partnership concept in Kenya, Kuria described the challenges and opportunities for capacity-building around integrated landscape management (ILM) and how 1000L can help mainstream these approaches. Building on Kuria’s remarks, Phemo Kgomotso, a UN Development Programme senior technical advisor, described the importance of scaling up ILM, especially in larger institutions like UNDP.
Additionally, Percy Summers, Conservation International’s director of sustainable landscapes and a landscape leader for Peru’s Alto Mayo landscape, shared his perspective on the need for finance systems transformation to implement landscape action plans effectively. Working directly with the 1000L finance solutions design team, Summers and the Alto Mayo Landscape Partnership will co-design innovative finance mechanisms to support their work and the work of other landscapes globally.
Willem Ferwerda, Commonland’s founder and CEO, spoke next to spotlight 1000L’s collaborative resource mobilization strategy. He also expressed gratitude to 1000L’s early supporters who shared the initiative’s vision for improving local livelihoods and biodiversity by applying ILM.
Representatives of 1000L’s financial supporters, the IKEA Foundation’s program manager Annelies Withofs and Laudes Foundation’s senior program manager Lakshmi Poti, explained how the initiative supports their objectives for systems change to improve rural livelihoods and address climate change.
We invite partners who share 1000L’s vision and ambition to join us on this journey to support Landscape Partnerships and help them achieve their goals. Contact 1000L program coordinator Tom Derr at tderr@ecoagriculture.org to learn more.
For a copy of the presentation, see here.
For the complete list of speakers, see here.
For a recording of the seminar, see here and see below for a time breakdown of the topics/speakers:
- 00:30 – Tom Derr – Welcome and housekeeping
- 2:55 – Nigel Sizer – Overview of 1000 Landscapes: a radical collaboration for systems change to strengthen Landscape Partnerships
- 14:40 – Corinne Moser – The Global Hub: harmonizing our efforts
- 18:28 – Amaya Webster – Intro to Terraso, a digital platform to support locally-led Landscape Partnerships
- 20:58 – Laura Nunez Alvarez – On the use of Terraso features
- 25:01 – Derek Caelin – Two case studies and initial Terraso features (measuring deforestation, ground-truthing, etc.)
- 34:00 – Steve Francis – What’s Terraso? Knowledge platform on ILM; data storage; a collection of tools
- 37:05 – Louise Buck – Capacity Building Design Team: On mainstreaming landscape thinking and skills, agenda and overview
- 38:50 – David Kuria – On landscape community leadership, incl. County Integrated Development Plans
- 45:45 – Phemo Kgomotso – UNDP’s role in Natural Resource Management in relation to human development, and the value that UNDP reaps from collaboration with 1000L
- 53:39 – Louise Buck – Overview of Capacity Design team solutions, incl. work on creating Landscape Profile & History, Landscape ILM capacity assessment -> Regional teams interested in benefiting from our work on ILM capacity development (Sintang, Ghana, Kenya, Cameroon, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru and others); Beatriz for ILM capacity assessment tool
- 57:00 – Deesha Chandra – On the development of a Guide on ILM, Learning Program Development and Learning Program Delivery
- 1:00:44 – Louise Buck – On mainstreaming ILM, and work initiated with Kiambu County, and preparing for engagement in GEF-supported Namibia landscape
- 1:03:26 –Seth Shames – Finance Solutions: shifting financial flows, the overall scope of Design Team, on financial tools development, finance mechanisms innovation, accelerating landscape finance
- 1:14:25 – Percy Summers – Work in Alto Mayo and collaboration with 1000L
- 1:21:50 – Daniel Zimmer – Finance system transformation
- 1:30:47 – Tom Derr – The Global Action Network: Collaborating to solve challenges
- 1:38:26 – Willem Ferwerda – Resource Mobilization strategy
- 1:45:45 – Annelies Withofs – On past and current engagement by the Foundation, and why they are supporting this initiative
- 1:51:40 – Lakshmi Poti – On their funding focus. new commitment to support the 1000L initiative
- 1:56:22 – Sara Scherr – Next steps: how can you join 1000L?
- 2:00:00 – Close
