Sustainable Landscape and Climate Smart Agriculture Solutions in Asia/Pacific

Sustainable Landscape and Climate Smart Agriculture Solutions in Asia/Pacific

The world is facing a two-fold existential crisis of both climate change and loss of biodiversity. The Paris Agreement commitments will require radical political and socio-economic changes at individual and institutional levels to shift to a low-carbon economy and cut greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, a radical increase in action to adapt to unavoidable climate change is necessary. The land-use sector, including forestry and agriculture, have a key role to play in this through the sustainable development of the land-based natural capital provided by forests, wetlands and other key ecosystems on which our economy depends. Forest and wetland degradation contributes over 25% of global GHG emissions and containing global warming to 1.5 degrees cannot be achieved without turning forests and wetlands into a net carbon sink. This will require the development of climate-smart business models and approaches to land-management and agriculture, but also the active halting and reversal of loss of biodiversity, through the conservation and restoration of healthy ecosystems.

In this session we shared some key examples of the work of GGGI and some of our partners in this field, ranging from work in restoring and enhancing productive natural and agricultural ecosystems through business- based low-carbon development approaches and technological innovations, as well as options for improving urban ecosystems and resilience. In view of the importance of monitoring for learning, and measuring and verification of results, we also looked at the latest developments in near-real time monitoring technology for forests, agriculture and biomass.