An aerial view of a forest in Nova Scotia, Canada. Photo: Tim Foster, Unsplash

4 steps to scale up forest solutions before COP30

What we learned at Forests, People, Planet
29 May 2025

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Forests provide untold benefits to people and planet, but we’re destroying them at a staggering rate.

Just last year, the tropics lost a record-breaking 6.7 million hectares of primary forest – that’s an area about the size of Peru and more than twice as much as was lost in 2023.

Forest loss and conservation will be a key theme at this year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Brazil, but global change starts at the local level.

That’s why almost 2,000 people from more than 120 countries gathered online and in Kemptville, Ontario, Canada, to discuss how to scale up effective, people-centered forest solutions.

This hybrid event was part of the International Model Forest Network (IMFN) Global Forum 2025 and builds on the discussions at GLF Forests 2025.

Here are four steps to scale up solutions we discovered at Forests, People, Planet: Scaling Local Solutions for Global Impact.

Forests, People, Planet participants
Photo: Pilar Valbuena/GLF

Put people at the center

A strong theme throughout the event was the need to put people at the core of forest stewardship and landscape restoration efforts.

“People have to be at the center of restoration – at the heart of it,” said Laura Mukhwana, coordinator of GLFx Nairobi.

And the voices, knowledge and leadership of traditionally marginalized groups is vital for equitable and effective landscape management. These groups must be not only included but also actively involved.

“We must elevate the voices of women, youth, Indigenous Peoples and smallholders – not just as stakeholders, but as leaders and decision makers,” said Éliane Ubalijoro, CEO of CIFOR-ICRAF.

This approach is already being implemented around the world through Model Forests.

“A Model Forest is built on inclusive partnerships that span large landscapes,” said Pierre-Jonathan Teasdale, director of the Trade and International Affairs Division at the Canadian Forest Service (CFS).

“These often bring together local communities, Indigenous Peoples, government, landowners, academia, NGOs and industry – all working together side by side.”

Panel
Photo: Pilar Valbuena/GLF

Build lasting relationships

The next step is turning partnerships into relationships and projects into lasting change.

“You need partnerships: you can’t address things on a landscape alone. You need to have a common goal and a common understanding,” said Richard Verbisky, head of the IMFN Secretariat and senior advisor, international affairs at the CFS.

Again, this starts with communities.

“When you go into a community and you want to plant trees, you first need to start planting trust – between communities, between governments, and between communities and governments,” said Pragyan Raj Pokhrel, a senior programme officer at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Without shared understanding and trust, the policies designed to protect and promote forests can fail to respond to local needs.

“We need to link various scales of government, going from the international to the national to the regional or subnational to local-level realities, to hopefully create a better, more just, livable future for people,” said Victoria Rachmaninoff, a research associate at the World Resources Institute.

There must also be engagement between different sectors – the ‘triangle’ of science, practice and policy, as put by Bernhard Wolfslehner, head of the Governance Programme at the European Forest Institute (EFI).

Imran Shaik, co-founder of Prakheti Agrologics and a 2025 GLF Forest Restoration Steward, pointed out that investing in forest management isn’t a sprint but a long-term endeavor.

“Stewardship is not a project – it cannot be treated as a project,” he said. “It’s a relationship, and with active communication and keeping communities in the center, we can keep this relationship alive with forest, with people, for a long time.”

Opening plenary
The opening plenary. Photo: Pilar Valbuena/GLF

Integrate diverse knowledge systems

An integral part of the relationships between groups and sectors is horizontal knowledge sharing.

This means including various knowledge systems in decision making and policy creation for forest conservation and landscape restoration.

For example, many traditional communities and Indigenous Peoples have considerable knowledge of managing fires in their territories, said Lara Steil, a forestry officer at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Global Fire Management Hub.

By actively involving those groups in the development of public policies, we can co-create stronger, more effective outcomes.

This is especially important for Indigenous Peoples in fire-prone areas as they are often the most impacted by climate risks and the first responders.

“For us as Indigenous people, it’s about our lives. It’s about the health of our families. It’s about our spiritual connection with our ancestors,” said Emmanuela Shinta, founder and director of the Ranu Welum Foundation and a GLFx Kalimantan representative.

“In climate risk management, they are not just victims. They are the first to be evicted, but they are also the first to respond. Why? Because they have to survive.”

It’s also important to acknowledge that restrictive power structures can exclude different knowledge systems, said Malaika Pauline Yanou, a post-doctoral researcher at the Chalmers University of Technology.

“There are sometimes moments where the most marginalized groups are left behind, and their local knowledge is not considered,” Yanou said.

And, as Fabiola Muñoz Dodero, coordinator in Peru for the Governors’ Climate & Forests (GCF) Task Force, put it: “The only way that we have the opportunity to really solve problems or develop some ideas is working together.”

Forests, People, Planet participants
Photo: Pilar Valbuena/GLF

Transform finance and invest in the bioeconomy

It should go without saying that all this requires financing – but the current system needs a rethink.

Existing forest financing often focuses on short-term projects rather than holistic, long-term goals.

“Financial models are top-down,” said Imran of Prakheti Agrologics. “They have metrics; they have targets. Communities are expected to deliver, which is amazing, but in reality, we see that they might end up being short-term interventions.”

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of hope that is given to communities, but there is no ecosystem to sustain it long-term.”

This is partly driven by the urgency of the problems forests face, but that shouldn’t stop us taking a long-term approach, said Pokhrel of IUCN.

The focus on metrics and targets can also lead to serious underfunding for key elements of forest management, such as governance.

“Very often, the donors are not providing funding for governance. They want to provide money and funding to things that they can measure, that are very specific, that have clear indicators,” said Patricia Bon, a senior program manager at EcoAgriculture Partners.

“We really need donors to understand that funding needs to go to management, to convening, to coordination, to support the governance piece of the landscape work.”

Financing must also balance livelihoods and conservation, which according to Peter Minang, director of Africa at CIFOR-ICRAF, starts with ensuring decision makers can see the value of forest landscapes.

“If we don’t convince the Minister of Finance about the value of forestry, they won’t invest. If forestry can’t create jobs, they won’t invest. So, we need to begin to think about how we are connecting landscape approaches to the economy,” he said.

Imran, meanwhile, highlighted the need to finance the communities already protecting and using forests.

“The priority should be recognizing, formalizing and supporting the green work that already exists – the work that is being done by these communities through various activities in the forest, in the buffer zones or outside the forest.”

Where that finance comes from is another question.

At Forests, People, Planet, speakers pointed to the need for communities, government and the private sector to all work together to solve the challenges forests face.

“We have to all work together to make it possible,” said Sandra Carolina Sarmiento, managing director of Terra Global Capital.

“It’s not only the private sector; it’s not only communities; it’s not only developers. It’s all of us working on the same page. If not, we are not going to make it to 2030.”

Laura Mukhwana
GLFx Nairobi coordinator Laura Mukhwana. Photo: Pilar Valbuena/GLF

Looking ahead at a pivotal moment

We’re exactly halfway to the 2030 targets for climate, biodiversity, land restoration and sustainable development.

And with the upcoming COP30 climate summit set to place a significant global focus on forests, the discussions at Forests, People, Planet offered timely and essential insights into scaling up effective, people-centered solutions.

These solutions are exactly what’s needed to tackle the intersecting crises of climate change, biodiversity, loss, food, insecurity and inequity, said CIFOR-ICRAF’s Ubalijoro.

“But amidst this polycrisis, there is also hope, and it is growing across landscapes and continents,” she said.

“We are sowing the seeds of transformation.”

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