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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.

Participants:

15 Intersectoral Teams were selected to attend the Global Dialogue Forum 2023. These intersectoral teams come from Armenia, Belize, Benin, Brasil, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Peru, and Mongolia, illustrating a regional balance with a strong representation from Africa and Latin America. Below is a graphical overview of the selected countries teams:

 

Event Programme:

View the full programme.

 

Key outcomes from the GDF 2023: 

  1. Improved understanding of the experiences, challenges, and lessons learned of land use planning across different countries and among stakeholders.
  2. Increased collaboration within countries between practitioners and stakeholders working on Integrated Land Use Planning (ILUP) and the voluntary targets set with the UNCCD.
  3. Identification of common themes, challenges, and opportunities for collaboration in addressing Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) and ILUP through peer-to-peer exchange and expert advice. One key outcome of this process is the development of country roadmaps for 2024. (GEO-LDN | Roadmaps)
  4. The establishment of a community and platform to receive recommendations from members states for the GEO-LDN and UNCCD in fulfilling their mandated.
  5. Increased awareness methods and best practices in using geospatial data for planning, monitoring, and reporting LDN and implementing ILUP.
  6. Capacity Development through training opportunities of different tools used for the different phases of planning, monitoring and reporting for LDN.

The very strong international interest in attending the GDF, and the success of the event itself, highlight the importance of continuing such events as a key element of the UNCCD and GEO-LDN programs. Ideally, future dialogue forums will be able to support a larger number of countries to attend and will work over a series of events through each of the phases of the ILUP cycle, from describing challenges and setting goals, to planning and implementation, and monitoring and evaluation (GEO-LDN | About the Toolbox).