Ministers, start-ups, scientists, indigenous leaders, bankers, journalists, youth. Virtual reality, spa treatments, documentaries, a book launch, short stories, gluhwein.
The second annual Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) Bonn event– themed ‘Connecting for impact: From commitment to Action’ – returns this weekend, 1–2 December, to fill the World Conference Center in its namesake German city with all kinds of people, learning experiences, discussions, innovations, ideas and, most importantly, actions that we can take individually and together to change the world.
Plenaries bringing the whole audience together will together tell a narrative of where we stand with global restoration commitments through to what we must do next – and now – to reach more targets more quickly. In these, we will hear from environment ministers changing the global South; two recent alternative Nobel Prize winners; young entrepreneurs inventing sustainable business models; and four businesswomen making some of the world’s most important decisions in ‘green’ finance.
There will also be an award-winning documentary screening, the Landscape Hero competition winner announced, and 20 GLF Charter members signing and committing to take more action to create sustainable landscapes.
In between plenaries are 18 different discussion forums on topics from bioenergy to migration to the 10th anniversary of REDD+; launchpads for nascent programs on landscape ‘philosophy’ and peatlands; side events on major global initiatives like AFR100 and the brand-new ITPC; and Landscape Talks that spotlight the most fascinating new findings and stories from the field in just seven-minutes.
The Pavilion area will be filled with a bazaar of booths and displays including an organic spa to refresh, bamboo bicycles to peddle, virtual reality to explore far-off lands, and 12 mini-workshops at the new GLF Learning Pavilion – a one-stop shop for educational resources on the Landscape Approach. Based on feedback from last year, there will also be more networking opportunities, including speed-networking as well as after-hours mingling with environment- and development-based conversation prompts.
In the digital edition (register here), in addition to livestreams of all plenaries and select discussion forums and side events, there will be live tweets, polls, Digital Summits and exclusively online Q&A sessions with speakers. If a discussion of interest isn’t broadcast in real time, check back in the weeks following, when every session will be published on our YouTube channel.
An on-site holiday market will cap off the two days – as this is winter in Germany, after all – but by no means marks the end to this event. In fact, we hope it is just the start of each participant changing their daily lives, even in the smallest of ways, to help reverse the trends of degradation and climate change. It starts here, and it starts this weekend. Rest up, there is work to be done!
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