GEO-LDN Global Dialogue Forum 2023

OBJECTIVES

The GEO-LDN Flagship provides a range of resources and support mechanisms to help countries achieve their Land Degredation Neutrality (LDN) targets for which growing a community of engaged partners striving to achieve LDN in their countries is vital to ensuring future growth and impact. The objective of the Global Dialogue Forum (GDF) is to create a sustainable and ongoing exchange and learning process with this community through peer-to-peer exchange, illustrating best practices, direct input from experts in the field and capacity development opportunities. LDN is also strongly linked to Integrated Land Use Planning (ILUP) which can help address poverty reduction, food security and biodiversity conservation. However, ILUP is a complex process that requires collaboration and coordination among different stakeholders, including government agencies, civil society organizations, and local communities as well as a representatives from a diverse range of sectors.

GLOBAL DIALOGUE FORUM 2023

The GDF featured a conversational format, allowing for open dialogue and the exchange of ideas among participants. In addition to the formal sessions, informal gatherings such as coffee breaks and networking receptions were organized to encourage community building and informal dialogue. Apart from the dialogue sessions, there were two half day training workshops on the use of geospatial tools to measure and monitor land degradation, and support ILUP.

The GDF agenda built on some of the information requested in the application process, which called on countries to identify a specific case or location where LDN can be applied, describe the key challenges, and consider how LDN might be achieved. National teams initially created a poster explaining their LDN challenge, the context such as legislation, partners, and stakeholders, and an estimate of the support they may need to achieve their objectives from organizations like GEO-LDN. 

The posters created an attractive and informative mechanism to communicate LDN challenges and objectives among the teams, and all teams had the opportunity to view every poster and raise questions about the challenge on the first day. This process facilitated south-to-south, inter- and intra-regional exchange, and provided valuable feedback for national teams to refine and revise their plans.

The second part of the agenda involved the development of a roadmap to make meaningful, achievable, measurable, and time-bound progress towards LDN for their use case in 2024. This included setting milestones to achieve their LDN objectives, and consideration of the resources needed to achieve them, which the teams developed with the guidance of experts from the GEO LDN Flagship. These roadmaps are one of the primary outcomes of the GDF, and the foundation for the continued collaboration between GEO-LDN and these countries.