"The restoration of degraded lands holds the potential to answer many of our planet's most pressing challenges, from fighting poverty and climate change to providing food, energy and water security to vulnerable communities," said Carole Saint-Laurent, Coordinator of the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration and senior landscape restoration manager for IUCN's Global Forest and Climate Change Programme. “This year’s Global Landscape Forum will shine a light on this approach and foster new thinking,” she said. IUCN and the Global Partnership are set to co-host a number of events on forest landscape restoration at the Forum.

The 2015 Global Landscapes Forum "will really advance the global restoration movement in support of the Bonn Challenge to restore 150 million hectares of degraded land by 2020," says Chetan Kumar, knowledge and science manager for restoration at IUCN. This year's event is expected to draw more than 2,000 participants, including experts, practitioners, students and members of government, private, non-profit and civil society organizations.

Before the end of 2015 the global community plans to establish an agreement guiding climate action beyond 2020 as well as a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – IUCN anticipates that the restoration of degraded and deforested land can contribute to each of these initiatives. “We hope that the discussions and ideas brought together at this year’s Global Landscapes Forum will resonate with the important global initiatives underway this year,” says Saint-Laurent.

The Forum will take place on December 5th and 6th.

For more details: www.landscapes.org/glf-2015/

To register: http://www.landscapes.org/glf-2015/register/