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Dear IPSI members and friends,
Greetings from the IPSI Secretariat in Tokyo, Japan. IPSI and its members continue to stay active in a wide variety of projects and activities related to maintaining and revitalizing socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS).
This month’s newsletter contains a report from the recent Global Landscapes Forum and an announcement of an upcoming GEF-Satoyama Project seminar in Tokyo. We would also like to draw readers' attention to the recently-adopted summary of the IPBES Global Assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services, and to one of IPSI's recent case studies from National Dong-Hwa University.
As always, we hope you will contact us to submit any new case studies or other information about your activities, or if you have any questions or comments.
IPSI Secretariat
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IPSI at the Global Landscapes Forum Kyoto 2019
The Global Landscapes Forum Kyoto 2019 was held on 12 May in Kyoto, Japan, bringing together around 170 representatives of government, NGOs, Indigenous groups, the private sector, youth, civil society, science and media for discussions of landscape issues. Global Landscapes Forum events are among the major landscape-focused events on the calendar, and are often held in conjunction with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plenary meetings, so the emphasis is on landscape approaches to climate solutions. The event featured presentations by a number of experts from within Japan and around the world with innovative ideas and explanations of current issues in the field.
The IPSI Secretariat held a tabletop exhibition at the Forum, providing documentation and information on the Satoyama Initiative and work under IPSI for the many distinguished delegates. We were extremely pleased with the amount of interest that IPSI received as one of the preeminent landscape and seascape initiatives in the world, and we were also happy to see many friends from the IPSI community at the event.
For more information on the Global Landscapes Forum Kyoto 2019, please see their website here.
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Seminar: "Satoyama Landscapes and Seascapes from around the World for Sustainable Development"
A seminar will be held on Wednesday, 29 May in the Global Environment Outreach Centre (GEOC) office in the United Nations University Headquarters building in Tokyo, Japan. This seminar is organized under a IPSI Collaborative Activity, the GEF-Satoyama Project, by Conservation International Japan. Two subgrantees under the GEF-Satoyama Project - The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) from India, and the Environmental Protection and Conservation Organization (EPCO) from Mauritius - will present their work, followed by discussion of relevant issues. The seminar will be in English and Japanese with interpretation. IPSI members and other readers in the Tokyo area are encouraged to attend and learn about different kinds of SEPLS-related practices around the world, as well as ongoing work related to IPSI.
For more information and to register, please see the Conservation International Japan website here (in Japanese only).
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IPBES Global Assessment Report
At its Seventh Plenary meeting, held 29 April to 4 May in Paris, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) approved the summary of its Global Assessment report. As many readers have probably seen from the great deal of attention the report got in the international media, it shows that we are facing a crisis in biodiversity, with around a million species facing extinction, many within the next decades. The report also provides some hope, though, noting that it is not too late to reverse the trend toward rapid biodiversity loss.
Many of our friends from the IPSI community, including several researchers associated with the IPSI Secretariat at UNU-IAS, contributed to the Global Assessment as authors and experts. Notably for IPSI, the report emphasizes concepts including multifunctional landscape planning, integrated landscape and watershed management, and ecosystem-based fisheries management as promising measures to achieve biodiversity goals. UNU-IAS has a Letter of Agreement with IPBES to provide expertise through the IPSI network, and we look forward to continuing to contribute to this major process in the future.
For more information, please see the media release on the IPBES website here.
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Recent Case Study: National Dong-Hwa University
The IPSI Secretariat recently received a case study from partner organization National Dong-Hwa University in Chinese Taipei, titled “Building up Multi-stakeholder Cross-sector Partnerships for the ‘Xinshe Forest-River-Village-Sea Ecoagriculture Initiative’ in Eastern Rural Taiwan".
In the past in rural areas, livelihoods of local and indigenous communities depended on environmentally friendly agriculture, forestry, fishery and livestock farming. Impacted by urbanization, conventional farming and climate change in recent decades; however, rural areas have been suffering from problems including aging, production landscape deterioration, economic depression, and traditional ethics and culture disappearance. The negative impact on biodiversity of reduced human intervention in rural areas has also become a problem. A ‘Forest-River-Village-Sea Ecoagriculture Initiative’ was launched in October 2016. The collaborative mechanism for promoting the Initiative involves a Task Force composed of 6 core members as well as a Multi-Stakeholder Platform comprised of about 20 interested stakeholders including local community organizations, central and local governmental institutions, local school, academics, NGOs, NPOs, green enterprises for planning, implementation and monitoring of new goal and action plan of the Initiative.
For more information, please see the full write-up of the case study on the IPSI website here.
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Contact
Please be sure to let the Secretariat know if there are any changes in your e-mail address or contact information.
Secretariat of the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative
5–53–70 Jingumae
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-8925
Japan
Tel: +81 3-5467-1212
Fax: +81 3-3499-2828
Email: isi@unu.edu
If you have been forwarded this newsletter and would like to SUBSCRIBE, you can do so on the IPSI website here.
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