Stagnant bureaucratic processes and political barriers do not bog down the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF), said human rights and indigenous rights activist Janene Yazzie, explaining that she likes the organization for its commitment to finding shared spaces for shared solutions.

Yazzie, based in the southwestern United States, where she helped introduce an integrated land and water management system to ward off encroaching drought, said that traditional knowledge is very important to finding solutions for degraded landscapes.

“Our unique cosmo visions define our science and our ways of knowing built over generations about how ecosystems work and our relationships to it, our interdependency upon the life that surrounds us and our responsibilities that we need to honor in order to maintain a balance that is sustainable, healthy and that takes into consideration our impact on future generations,” she said during an interview at a GLF conference in Bonn, Germany, last December.