World leaders convened for the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in December 2015 to set the global climate agenda and ratify the SDGs. At the same time, the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) was participating in the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF), an annual event held concurrently with COP where over 3000 practitioners and expert discuss land-use in relation to climate change. This platform allows participants to leverage the opportunity provided by the COP in order to shape the world’s development trajectory to be more holistic, inclusive, and equitable.

WLE scientists contributed to both COP21 and GLF with evidence and experience on how landscape approaches can contribute to climate change mitigation and sustainable intensification of agriculture.

At GLF, WLE in cooperation with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) organized a high level panel on gender and land tenure. The panel focused on the practical requirements for implementing gender-sensitive land restoration while moving beyond the usual rhetoric on gender issues for practicable and equitable solutions.

During CoP21, WLE through researchers at CIAT was involved in the launch of an important 5-year program, which is part of the 4‰ Initiative: Soils for food security and climate. The program aims to mitigate climate change through soil carbon sequestration in at least five countries while improving agricultural production by increasing soil organic carbon and restoring soil health and fertility. According to Deborah Bossio, director of Soil Research at CIAT and co-leader the Regenerating Degraded Agricultural Ecosystems research theme, understanding the numbers is very important. 0.4% (four parts per thousand) a year is the rate of carbon sequestration in soil that is needed to help mitigate climate change. This would mean sequestering 3.5 Gigaton (Gt) of carbon per year, 0.4 – 1.2 Gt of which can be achieved in croplands. As such, it is necessary to think about agricultural lands interact with other land types, such as pasture, grasslands, forests and peat lands.

Some methods that have the potential to achieve the win-win of climate change mitigation and productive sustainable agriculture are: no-till agriculture; improving foraging practices in degraded pastures; evergreen agriculture, which would mean incorporating more trees into farming systems; better irrigation management; and recycling nutrients from waste produced in urban and peri-urban areas.