CDLS 2016 comes to a close

After an intense and productive week, the Caux Dialogue on Land and Security (CDLS) closed with a final plenary giving all participants the opportunity to reflect on the new insights gained and look ahead to changes they want to initiate in the future.

In the final keynote address, Luc Gnacadia, Executive Secretary of UNCCD, former Minister for the Environment in Benin and father figure of the CDLS pointed out three new lenses that CDLS has provided to the topic of land restoration. First, the crucial role of leadership; especially the one based on personal change that can lead by example and be a valuable asset for profitable investment to enhance stability locally and globally. Second, the importance of trustbuilding for the situational analysis and decision-making within land restoration. Third, Gnacadja also engaged with the question why land users and farmers do often not invest in sustainable land management. His answer is simple: Farmers and land users are often not able to capture the multiple and often off-side socio-economic benefits of sustainable land management which is why it is essential for them to become landscape managers. It is this kind of accountability and benefit sharing along value change through just governance that makes land restoration achievable.

While looking back at the achievements of the Caux Dialogue on Land and Security 2016, the following highlights invite for a short review:

Dr. Martin Lees: “It is the poor who face the most severe impacts, even though they are in no way responsible for the warming of the planet…Degradation of soils, water and the oceans will intensify poverty and migration for a growing world population.”

Dina Ionesco, a migrant herself who is now Head of Migration, Environment and Climate Change of IOM: “Migration is not always mass migration. Migration is not always south-north. Migration is not only negative.”

Ambassador William Lacy Swing, Director General of the International Organization for Migration: "Migration is not a problem to be solved, it is a reality to be managed - start by accepting reality in perspective."

The official closing of this year’s CDLS ended with the social entrepreneurs of the Fellowship Programme 2016 presenting the main findings and developments of their projects. As moderator Peter Rundell, from Initiatives of Land, Lives and Peace, stated: We are looking forward to hear from them soon and hopefully see them again at CDLS 2017!