2020•02•28

On 23 February 2020, as part of its International Satoyama Initiative (ISI) project, UNU-IAS held an open meeting on landscape and seascape approaches to biodiversity conservation and sustainable development for the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework at FAO Headquarters in Rome, Italy. Around 35 participants—mostly delegates from national government parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)—attended for a lively discussion of what a landscape approach can contribute to making biodiversity policy more effective, and to share experiences and perspectives from countries around the world.

The parties to the CBD are currently involved in the process of developing the “Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework” to follow the end of the current Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, developed for the UN Decade on Biodiversity. As a contribution to this process, this meeting was held in the margins of the Second Meeting of the Open-Ended Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, held 24—29 February 2020 at FAO Headquarters. Since the project was launched in 2010, the work has shown that landscape approaches have great potential to improve the effectiveness and implementation of policy at local, national, and global levels, and UNU-IAS staff used the opportunity of the meetings in Rome to provide expert advice to the delegates.

Participants at the meeting identified a number of benefits of landscape approaches, particularly that they can improve inclusivity by bringing together all interests and stakeholders in a landscape, enhance management of protected areas and spatial planning through greater connectivity across the landscape, and help to align policy at multiple levels. Several of the national parties present also shared their specific interests in the inclusion of landscape approaches in both national and international policy, and plans for related negotiations during the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

The meeting was co-organized with the Ministry of the Environment of Japan, the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality of the Netherlands, and the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.