Last week, humanity celebrated the International Day for Biological Diversity, recognising that agrifood sectors – crop and livestock production, fisheries and aquaculture, and forestry – are the foundation for nature’s sustainability.

Tomorrow, a critical meeting of experts, scientists, practitioners, policymakers and grassroots leaders, including the youth from around the world, will discuss the fate of forests as vital ecosystems in biodiversity amid the climate crisis.

Organised by Global Landscapes Forum (GLF), the Forests, People, Planet Conference is a follow-up to the GLF meeting last month that brought together over 3,000 scientists, practitioners and allies from 145 countries in Bonn, Germany, to shape the next decade of forest action.

GLF is the world’s largest knowledge-led platform on integrated land use. It is dedicated to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris Climate Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – the universal masterplan to halt and reverse biodiversity loss – and is committed to the landscape approach.

Titled GLF Forests 2025, the Bonn forum laid the foundations for a resilient, productive and just future for forests, building on 30 years of research and findings from the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), whose headquarters are located in Nairobi.

Building on 30 years’ research and expertise, CIFOR-ICRAF and GLF convened forest leaders from around the world for the biggest event on forests in 2025.

Tipping point

In November this year, Brazil will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in the city of Belém at the heart of the mighty Amazon Forest – highlighting one of the world’s most important tropical environments, a biodiversity hotspot and a globally important carbon sink.

The world’s forests are increasingly under threat, both from deforestation and from the climate crisis itself. The Amazon Forest is on the brink of a tipping point. The next decade will be crucial for our forests, GLF 2025 heard, as participants deliberated on what is needed to save them before it’s too late.

One of the forum’s themes was ‘The Living Forest: Food, Forests and the Future of Community-driven Restoration’, a topic to be featured again at tomorrow’s Forests, People, Planet Conference: Scaling Local Solutions for Global Impact.

GLF says the conference will help participants to learn how to work with local communities and protect the world’s forests, and the livelihoods they sustain. GLF Forests 2025 urged world leaders to raise forests high on the political agenda ahead of COP30.

From innovations in the Congo Basin, the world’s largest forest-based carbon sink, to the complex realities of the Amazon Rainforest, the most biodiverse forest on the planet and host of the next global climate summit, key insights delivered by the forest peoples themselves emerged from GLF Forests 2025.

The main message was that beyond trees, forests are also the communities and the species that inhabit them.

“We need a collaboration where we co-design with the locals to redefine what success is, because for local communities, success is about survival. It’s about fisheries. It’s about natural resources. It’s about culture, and it’s not about the targets that were placed upon them from the top,” said Camille Rivera, co-founder at Oceanus Conservation and GLFx Mindanao chapter coordinator.

According to Shaik Imran, co-founder at Prakheti Agrologics and a 2025 GLF Forest Restoration Steward, it’s important for stakeholders to not just look at big partnerships with NGOs and research institutes, but also scale down to see how communities are impacted and see what they need and expect from a partnership. These communities are on the frontline of forest loss, human-wildlife conflict and climate change more broadly.

“There will be no forest left standing if the rights of Indigenous peoples remain on the ground. In addition to the economic transition, we need to make a political transition and a humanitarian transition,” said Célia Xakriabá, a member of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies for the state of Minas Grais and one of the 8 Women with a New Vision for Earth in 2025.

GLF Forests 2025 also established that forest action is climate action and food security.

“If we lose forests, we’ll have remote effects we may not even be thinking about right now. That’s why we need a holistic view of forests,” said Christopher Martius, senior advisor, climate change, energy and low-emission development at CIFOR-ICRAF.

International finance, policy and local action together drive meaningful change.

“The voices of those who have skin in the game – local communities and Indigenous peoples (the forest people) – are the ones who must define the global agenda,” asserted Forest Stewardship Council International Director-General Subhra Bhattacharjee.

Carood Watershed Model Forest Management Council’s Christine Vale noted that national and global policy frameworks must always start from the ground because efforts are only successful when policies have been co-created, not imposed.

Immeasurable value

“We also need sustained investment in ecosystem restoration. Short-term projects can’t deliver long-term impact. We call for financing that are stable and community driven,” she added.

Each year, the world loses 4.7 million hectares of forests – an area the size of the Dominican Republic. What can be done to protect them?

Forests cover nearly a third of the Earth’s land area. They store vast amounts of carbon, provide us with food, fuel and materials, and offering immeasurable cultural and spiritual value. Luckily, communities worldwide are taking control by restoring and revitalising their local landscapes, and they need support to take their work to the next level.

“It’s better to invest now in protecting the forest than in the future trying to find out ways to produce food for a growing population. The paradigm of getting rid of native vegetation to perform agriculture – we need to change that paradigm into one in which forests are part of the productions system,” said IPAM Amazonia Executive Director André Guimarães.

A hybrid event this week, the International Model Forest Network (IMFN) Global Forum 2025 at the Kemptville Campus, Ontario, Canada, will be held alongside the Forests, People, Planet Conference. It is being attended by 200 delegates representing over 60 Model Forests from around the world.

Located less than an hour from downtown Ottawa, the Kemptville Campus includes 254 hectares and 17 main buildings, as well as woodlands, cropland, wetland, greenspace, greenhouses, trails, and agroforestry centre, and maple bush, among other buildings.

The IMFN Global Forum is a business, technical, and networking meeting in which members share knowledge, review their accomplishments, address challenges, and agree on Network-wide and other strategic plans and initiatives for the three-year period following the Global Forum. It also sets international forest policy priorities.

The Global Landscapes Forum Hybrid Day tomorrow will explore innovative, community-led solutions for sustainable forest stewardship, according to the GLF. Participants at the hybrid event will review local successes and connect with forest leaders to shape actionable strategies for climate resilience, biodiversity conservation, and equitable development.

The 2025 IMFN Global Forum will include a series of parallel regional annual governance meetings, a multi-day IMFN Global Forum as well as the IMFN Assembly and IMFN climate knowledge consolidation workshop, and field tours with the host Model Forest to learn from local experiences and landscape governance processes.