In 2019 the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) will focus the world’s attention on the fundamental importance of rights to address the current environmental crisis. Linking people to landscapes, the GLF will explore the essential contributions of indigenous peoples, local communities, and rural and indigenous women and youth in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement targets on climate change, highlighting the transformative role of rights and rights-based approaches in securing a more just, sustainable and prosperous future for all. Woven across the year’s events, these priorities will form the centerpiece of the annual conference in Bonn, Germany – to be held on June 22–23 alongside the intersessional climate talks – making it the world’s single largest forum on rights and sustainable landscapes.

To catalyze social and environmental transformation, the GLF is structured as a co-learning process incorporating the voices, knowledge and priorities of socially, economically and politically marginalized groups in the development of land-based solutions to climate change, low emissions development and global sustainability. By recognizing rural and indigenous peoples as rights-holders and bearers of solutions, as opposed to mere “beneficiaries” of proposed interventions within their own landscapes, the GLF aims to foster new forms of collaboration, anchored in a common understanding that justice and equity are essential to sustainability.

Policies and investments that recognize the importance of traditional knowledge, tenure security and the right to self-determination are essential for sparking progress. Strengthening the ability of indigenous peoples, local communities, and rural and indigenous women and youth to play a role in the sustainable use and governance of the world’s landscapes is a social, economic and environmental urgency.