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31 March 2020 General
ETFRN News 60 will focus on dryland landscape restoration, from government and private sector reforestation to farmer managed natural regeneration, improvements to grasslands and rainfed agriculture, changes in tenure and governance, management of exotic species and bush encroachment. It will look at how to ensure smallholder and community participation and financing, while assessing the myriad roles of varied policies, current and potential roles of the private sector and non-governmental organisations, and how different relationships with local people and associations influence the eventual impacts. The environmental impacts of landscape-level restoration appear to be clear, the social impacts less so, and these will also be further analysed in the light of the above contexts.
20 March 2020 the Netherlands
A new decade has started, and international attention to forests seems at an all-time high. The 2010s were a decade of ambitious international commitments. The Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the New York Declaration on Forests, and the Warsaw REDD+ Agreement—all stress the need to conserve and restore millions of hectares of forests. Still, throughout the 2010s, deforestation rates have remained high. The 2020s will reveal whether these commitments will actually have an effect. Here René Boot, Director of Tropenbos International, reflects on the longer-term trends, and looks ahead at what lies in front of us.
04 February 2020 the Netherlands
Acknowledging past achievements, but also that the landscape in which it operates has evolved in so many ways over past decades, in 2019 ETFRN initiated a scoping study to reassess its niche and (potential) future roles. As part of this study we spoke to many different people and organisations who have been part of ETFRN, and others who have not. We asked questions about its continuing relevance, and if so, what revisions should be made to its membership, target group, gaps and emerging issues to address, priority activities, organizational and management structure, and how to secure financial sustainability.
30 January 2020 Bolivia
In 2019 large parts of Bolivia have been burning. Fires started by farmers and cattle ranchers spread into natural areas, where they were hard to control. The fires caused widespread destruction, but banning the use of fire is not the solution, says Nataly Ascarrunz.
20 December 2019 the Netherlands
The eDialogue “Scaling up innovative finance for sustainable landscapes” organized by CGIAR FTA, CIFOR and Tropenbos International concluded this week with a Digital Summit “Barriers to inclusive finance in a context of sustainable landscapes” in which three of the outstanding eDialogue participants explained their particular experiences in facing barriers to sustainable landscapes finance. Through their debate, possibilities for such experiences to be applied in other parts of the tropics or scaled up were analyzed, to an online audience who posed very relevant questions.
17 December 2019 the Netherlands
Agriculture, forestry and other land uses are central to the implementation of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). They may also contribute up to 20% of emission reductions needed to achieve the Paris mitigation target, and nearly 60% of food production is produced by smallholders (<20 ha) many of whom are vulnerable to climate change.