2019•07•19     New York

Speakers at the 15 July side event in New York

On 15 July 2019, UNU-IAS co-organised a side event at the 2019 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) in New York that showcased community-based approaches to landscape management.

With the topic “Satoyama Initiative – Society in harmony with Nature: An Inclusive Approach for Communities on Landscapes and Seascapes”, the event shared lessons from the Satoyama Initiative, a global effort to realise society in harmony with nature through integrated landscape management approaches. UNU-IAS hosts the Secretariat of the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative (IPSI), a network of organisations working to implement the Satoyama Initiative.

The event introduced a community-based landscape approach for conserving ecosystems and biodiversity, while promoting sustainable livelihoods, the Community Development and Knowledge Management for the Satoyama Initiative (COMDEKS) programme.

Discussions were moderated by Kazuhiko Takemoto (Director, UNU-IAS). A keynote speech by Kazuhiko Takeuchi (President, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies — IGES; Senior Visiting Professor, UNU-IAS) highlighted the Satoyama Initiative and IPSI’s contributions to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the SDGs.

Country presentations were given by Doma Tshering (Ambassador & Permanent Representative of Bhutan to the United Nations), who highlighted work of the COMDEKS Programme in the Gamri Watershed project in Bhutan, and Christian Guillermet Fernandez (Deputy Permanent Representative of Costa Rica to the United Nations), who shared examples of community ownership as an essential part of conservation solutions in Costa Rica. Wataru Suzuki (CBD Secretariat) presented the Japan Biodiversity Fund as a key tool for capacity building in developing countries, and Yoko Watanabe (UNDP) introduced the Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (GEF SGP) and the COMDEKS Programme.

Remarks were also delivered by Satoru Morishita (Vice Minister for Global Environment Affairs, Ministry of the Environment of Japan) and Stephen Gold (Global Team Leader on Climate Change, UNDP), with Astrid Schomaker (Director for Sustainable Development, European Commission) serving as a discussant.

The event was organised by UNU-IAS, the CBD Secretariat, UNDP, IGES, GEF SGP, and the governments of Bhutan, Costa Rica, and Japan. Participants concluded that the inclusive approach of the Satoyama Initiative together with initiatives such as COMDEKS could provide a firm basis for the implementation of the SDGs, the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, as well as for the preparation of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.