Restoration. Trees. People. Agriculture. Land-use. All of these pieces trickle into one puzzle: landscapes, the idea behind the Global Landscapes Forum movement. Although it has found a physical home in Bonn, Germany, thanks to the generous support of the forward-thinking government of Germany, the virtual home or the Global Landscapes Forum is infinite.
We all should #ThinkLandscape. Why? Because we all live in a landscape. Echoed by a number of attendees was the magic of landscapes, and this movement: it is all about being interconnected and working in partnership. Landscapes bridge everything from a farm, river, city, mountain, forest and your backyard and the combination of all of the above. These ecological puzzles make everything interconnected; the actions of a community living upstream inevitably affect communities living downstream.
Just as we are a puzzle-piece of the environment, it is us who make the Global Landscapes Forum “a movement worth building,” as actor and activist Alec Baldwin said at the opening plenary on the 19th of December, 2017, in Bonn.
There’s not enough time for one person to do everything, especially if we want them to do it well. We all have different interests and ways in which we can contribute to using and conserving our landscapes sustainably so it only makes sense that not only a healthy landscape depends on healthy interconnectedness but a successful partnership depends on a collaboration between people who have expertise in optimizing agriculture, conservation and human well-being.
To work at the landscape level, is to look at the bigger picture. Erik Solheim, Executive Director of UN Environment, warned that if we really want to change what we do to our planet, landscapes are the answer. “They allow us to kill three birds with one stone: take care of the climate, biodiversity and reduce pollution and haze.”
So what can you do to make our landscapes more sustainable?
Join the #ThinkLandscape movement, follow the livestream throughout the 19th and 20th of December, help shape the future of the Global Landscapes Forum, read the inspiring blogs submitted for the blog competition, join the course and don’t forget to bookmark https://www.globallandscapesforum.org/ to keep track of the different opportunities in 2018.
Blogpost by Marta Millere, Bioversity International – #GLFBonn2017 Social Reporter – m.millere(at)cgiar.org
Picture by Nom & Malc (Flickr)
This post is part of the live coverage during the GLF Bonn 2017 Global event. This post is written by one of our social reporters, and represents the author’s views only.
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