This article is brought to you by the Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration (FOLUR) Impact Program. Rewatch FOLUR’s session at GLF Climate 2025 here.

Agrifood systems contribute around a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, we can’t solve the climate crisis without tackling emissions from food, agriculture and livestock.

Last November, GLF Climate 2025 gathered over 10,000 people online and at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, to rally around real climate solutions already being implemented around the world.

The Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration (FOLUR) Impact Program hosted a session titled “Farming for the future: Enabling proven practices and policies for sustainable agriculture,” which showcased several success stories among FOLUR and GLF-supported projects.

From stingless beekeeping to complying with new rules on deforestation, here’s how countries and grassroots initiatives are taking on climate, land and biodiversity challenges.

Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Ghana responds to the EU Deforestation Regulation

While the European Union’s proposed Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) has been delayed until the end of 2026, agricultural producers across the globe are already taking steps to make their products compliant – or risk being locked out of a crucial export market.

Ghana, the world’s second-largest producer of cocoa, has implemented a nationwide cocoa tracing system that tracks each cocoa bean as it progresses along its value chain from farm to port.

Kingsley Kwako Amoako, a deputy director in the Directorate of Crop Services at Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture, explained how this cutting-edge system works to ensure that only sustainably produced cocoa is being shipped to the EU.

The EUDR has serious implications for our GDP, forest protection, cocoa exports and farmers’ livelihoods.

We have established the Ghana Cocoa Traceability System. Every cocoa farmer has now been given an identity card that captures everything about them, and every farm has been color-coded so that we know which farm each cocoa bean is coming from.

This enables the Ghana Cocoa Board to segregate conventionally-farmed cocoa from sustainably-produced cocoa that meets EUDR conditions when buying from farmers.

Farmers must bring their ID cards when selling their produce. The purchasing clerk scans the card, which provides information on whether the cocoa is coming from a sustainably-producing farm or a conventional farm.

This is then cross-checked at the district level, and again at the port before shipment. We can now trace every bean to the specific farm it came from so that we can be sure that it meets EUDR conditions before the cocoa is exported.

Ethiopia restores old coffee trees

What happens to coffee trees once they reach the end of their productive life? Ethiopia, one of the world’s leading coffee producers, has enlisted FOLUR’s support to restore its aging trees.

Mulugeta Worku Ayele, a project manager at Ethiopia’s Ministry of Planning and Development, gave this overview of how the FOLUR Ethiopia project is replacing old coffee trees and implementing other sustainable practices, such as agroforestry.

More than 50 percent of Ethiopian coffee trees are old or aged, which means they’re less productive or completely unproductive.

We have introduced a system that restores these old coffee trees using two approaches.

One is stamping, which involves cutting off an old tree at 30 to 40 centimeters of height from the ground. This allows new sprouts to grow, which take around two years to start producing yields.

The other method involves uprooting old coffee trees. If an old tree is no longer supporting growth, we remove it and replant it using improved coffee varieties.

We have integrated agroforestry systems, which includes pulse-grade legumes intercropped with plantains and integrated with coffee, as well as shade trees, which protect the coffee trees from sunlight.

We also integrate natural soil fertility management through composting and vermicomposting.

There is another component integrated to this old coffee restoration: women’s economic and social empowerment.

We have managed to organize more than 17,000 women into 450 self-help groups, small and medium enterprises and cooperatives. 

These women are not only engaged in income-generating activities but also supplying coffee inputs like seedlings and feeding into the coffee value chain.

Stingless bees inspire communities in the Peruvian Amazon

Last year, stingless bees in the Peruvian Amazon became the world’s first insects to be granted legal rights.

These often overlooked native insects are at the heart of several restoration projects supported by the GLF through its GLFx and Restoration Steward programs.

One such project is Peru’s Sumak Kawsay, led by 2023 Mountain Restoration Steward Ysa Calderón, who closed the session with this ode to meliponiculture.

Sumak Kawsay is a social enterprise that has been working in mountain and dry forest ecosystems since 2017. We started this enterprise without money or funds, and becoming resilient was the most challenging thing for us.

We started to restore ecosystems to preserve biodiversity, specifically pollinators – in our case, stingless bees. We preserved three species of stingless bees in our mountains. 

In 2023, I became a Restoration Steward for the Global Landscapes Forum. Then, last year, I won the Midori Prize for Biodiversity, which allowed us to launch a new program this year: the Women Guardians of the Native Bees.

This program is empowering 60 women from six communities – from monsoon and dry forest ecosystems – and we’re empowering Quechua women, too.

Community is not a stakeholder in restoration. Community is restoration.

This is the message that we have learned in the mountain and dry forests of northern Peru, where restoration is not only ecological; it’s cultural. It’s social and deeply human.

When we speak about restoring forests, we are also speaking about restoring our relationship with the land, water, pollinators, food, nature and each other.

And in our case, restoration begins with listening to elders who remember the forests that once existed. Listening to the native stingless bees whose presence tells us whether an ecosystem is healthy or collapsing. 

These bees – tiny, ancient and often invisible – are at the heart of our restoration work. They are indicators of biodiversity and guardians of food security.

And lastly, community-led restoration is power. It’s powerful because it grows from identity, not obligation.

Women and youth lead our work restoring forests, producing sustainable honey, monitoring biodiversity and developing regenerative livelihood models.

Their leadership shows that restoration is not a project. It’s a way of life that protects both nature and dignity.