What is Landscape Partnership Asia?
Landscape Partnership Asia (LPA) is a multi-stakeholder platform that will implement performance-based investments in the restoration of Asian drylands and drought-prone areas through networks of ‘engagement landscapes’ deploying evidence-based techniques.
These investments will mitigate the climate crisis, build resilience of forests, rangelands and agricultural landscapes, and improve livelihoods.
This initiative will link to other restoration initiatives –such as the Bonn Challenge, the UN Decade of Ecosystems Restoration and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ Asia-Pacific Forest Landscape Restoration –to create synergies.
Why Asian Drylands?
Despite the growing number of global initiatives on landscape restoration, most initiatives do not focus on drylands. Drylands and dry forests represent 41% of the world’s land area and are inhabited by 2.5 billion people; Asia has the largest share of the world’s drylands10-20% of drylands suffer from land degradation. Research shows the expansion of degraded drylands will cover 56% of the global land surface if no remediation measures are taken. Given the extent of drylands, specifically Asian drylands, a targeted initiative for restoring drylands is needed to support national and international goals on sustainable development.
How will we achieve this?
The Partnership will emphasize physical restoration and the development of small-to-medium enterprises and associated value chains to ensure that communities directly benefit from the restored land.
The Partnership will assist community-based businesses and value chains to link to the domestic, regional, and global markets so that risks are adequately spread out to provide farmers with stable income. Innovative financing mechanisms to de-risk farm and community-managed forest portfolios, such as payment for ecosystem services and public–private partnerships, will be incorporated into the project design as incentives for the uptake of sustainable technologies.
The Partnership will work closely with national governments regarding policy dialogue processes, joint implementation, capacity-development, scaling-up, and advocacy, and in tracking the Partnership’s efforts in national restoration achievements.
Robust partnerships amongst government, technical, implementing and funding partners, and local communities.
Mobilize financial, human and technical resources, as well as policy support.
Build networks of ‘engagement landscapes’ where all partners work together to achieve transformational change within landscapes.
Deploy proven scalable solutions.