IUCN World Conservation Congress 2021

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Held once every four years, the IUCN World Conservation Congress brings together several thousand leaders and decision-makers from government, civil society, indigenous peoples, business, and academia, with the goal of conserving the environment and harnessing the solutions nature offers to global challenges.

The Congress aims to improve how we manage our natural environment for human, social and economic development, but this cannot be achieved by conservationists alone. The IUCN Congress is the place to put aside differences and work together to create good environmental governance, engaging all parts of society to share both the responsibilities and the benefits of conservation.

A Congress with two components

The Forum is a hub of public debate, bringing together people from all walks of life to discuss the world’s most pressing conservation and sustainability challenges. It includes many different types of events from high level dialogues to training workshops which explore the depths of conservation and innovation.

The Members’ Assembly is UICN’s highest decision-making body. A unique global environmental parliament, it involves governments and NGOs – large and small, national and international – taking joint decisions on conservation and sustainability.

Please also note the following dates for the Congress components:

We selected some Forum sessions related to Viticulture and Climate Change (or more widely related to agriculture):

This training session provides an overview of the process needed for designing and implementing effective monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) interventions. It introduces participants to the intricacies and challenges associated with monitoring and evaluating EbA, and provides them with approaches and tools for addressing these. Participants will learn how to use a theory of change approach as the basis for developing a long-term M&E system that goes beyond measuring the activities and outputs of an EbA intervention to evaluating the outcomes and impacts of those actions. By developing theories of change for typical EbA interventions, participants will gain hands-on experience in carrying out the process, including in identifying risks, assumptions and appropriate indicators (focusing on medium- to long-term outcome indicators). The training will also cover steps for operationalising an M&E system, and for using and communicating M&E results.

We are facing major global challenges, such as increasing world hunger, climate change, as well as land, soil and biodiversity degradation. The majority of people living in extreme poverty live in rural areas as small-holder farmers, and small-scale agriculture still accounts for most of the world's food production. Efforts to improve farmers' opportunities are crucial in preventing hunger in countries with widespread poverty. There are solutions. One example, raised by the climate panel of the United Nations (IPCC), is agroforestry, where trees are planted amongst crops and livestock. Agroforestry can provide nutritious food and create resilience against the effects of climate change, such as droughts and floods, whilst binding carbon dioxide in trees and soil, and contribute to agro-biodiversity, wild biodiversity, through ecological corridors in the landscape, as well as to soil microflora. In order to achieve the best results, a strong gender equality focus is needed.

All about Environmental Impact Assessments, which are required in many countries to analyze projects' greenhouse-gas emissions and other climate-related and environmental impacts. How citizens and NGOs can participate in the process to foster better climate-change outcomes, and how EIA litigation can be used to force project proponents to lower projects' GHG emissions.

The world is waking up to the need to mobilize nature-based solutions to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals and address imminent global challenges: climate change, ecosystem degradation and food security. The science is clear and the economic case strong: soil health is the foundation of our food system; it boosts the resilience of farms and supply chains to the effects of increased climate variability. Businesses collaborating in the WBCSD Food & Nature Program together with expert partners step up to address this need through action on investment in soil health and sustainable landscapes. This session aims to (1) enhance recognition of the multiple dimensions of benefits of investment in soil health beyond acting as carbon sinks, of sustainable landscapes, their simultaneous contribution to the objectives of 3 UN conventions: UNFCCC, UNCBD and UNCCD and (2) explore possibilities for effective public-private collaboration, a key for transformative action at scale.

Agriculture has extracted wide expanses from the natural system for food production. The concept of intensification of food production, adopted in the last 50 years, has encouraged monocultures and the complete eradication of elements of the natural system, which are considered hazards. However, this has increased the level and rate of infestations by insects and fungal species, soil degradation, which requires use of subsidies from chemical or natural fertilizers, and water pollution from the utilized large array of chemicals. Realizing these losses, today we are promoting more healthy agricultural techniques and practices to induce sustainability of produce, while reducing negative environmental and agricultural impacts and assisting climate change mitigation and adaptation, thus we are resorting to AGROFORESTRY techniques and practices.

More informations on UICN congress 2021 website