GLF Nairobi drew 800 delegates to the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) headquarters in Nairobi from 29 to 30 August 2018, and 13,380 people joined the discussions online. Participants came from a variety of backgrounds and sectors, including communities, youth, government, non-governmental and international organizations, civil society organizations (CSOs), community-based organizations, finance, and private sector institutions. Delegates participated in 9 plenary sessions, 19 discussion forums, 7 side events and various media sessions. The wide-ranging discussions centered on the following topics: community-based restoration, restoration financing, private sector engagement, land and tree tenure, invasive species management, land-use planning, rangelands restoration, restoration of mangroves, and social inclusion and gender. A youth program and a media training program were conducted ahead of the GLF.
Showcased were restoration success stories and challenges involving local communities, governments and the private sector from across the continent. Government representatives shared reports detailing activities to support efforts to meet their national restoration targets. And the forum featured local- and national-level successes, it also gave ample space for participants to voice concerns over the monumental task of implementing forest and landscape restoration – and to propose creative solutions. The conference also sparked a conversation among African government representatives about endorsing the ‘UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030’, which was originally proposed by the government of El Salvador during the Bonn Challenge high-level meeting in Brazil in March 2018 and subsequently endorsed by eight governments of Central America.
This outcome statement aims to capture the buzz of GLF Nairobi, summarizing the discussions, challenges, ideas and potential solutions that arose out of the sessions.
