The Land-Peace Nexus: Advancing Restoration for Peacebuilding, Resilience, and Stability

📝 Event Description

In this 90-minute cross-learning event, restoration practitioners, policymakers, and researchers will come together to explore the role and potential of restoration in promoting peace, resilience and stability and how to undertake restoration in conflict sensitive settings.

Participants will engage with both research insights and practical case studies and will be encouraged to contribute to collective thinking on the topic.

Note: This is an online event with French - English simultaneous translation.

🔍 What to Expect

• Strengthen understanding of the land–peace nexus through expert insights, addressing knowledge gaps, and sharing best practices
• Share knowledge about different sources of conflict affecting land and ecosystems, such as mining, disputes over resource access and illegal land use
• Present field-based insights on how ecosystem restoration fosters peace, using compelling stories and case studies
• Showcase collaboration between actors for restoration with peace-positive outcomes, using conflict-sensitive approaches
• Co-create a practice-oriented roadmap for context-specific restoration strategies that support peacebuilding

💡 Why This Event Matters

Earth’s natural systems are essential to human wellbeing, supporting over three billion people globally (IPBES, 2019). With $44 trillion in global revenue tied to healthy ecosystems (WEF, 2023), their degradation—now affecting 20–40% of land (UNCCD, 2024)—poses serious risks to peace and stability.

Environmental decline intersects with social, economic, and governance challenges, weakening resilience and fueling insecurity. In fragile contexts, instability further accelerates degradation as communities shift to immediate needs over long-term sustainability.

While restoration offers environmental and livelihood benefits (UNCCD, 2024), achieving peace outcomes requires deeper understanding and sensitive design. In some areas, restored lands become contested, as armed groups seek control of natural assets—highlighting the urgent need for context-aware strategies.

👥 Who Should Attend

• Restoration practitioners working at ground level on project implementation
• Regional actors focused on programme design and coordination
• Policy developers and advisers shaping rural development and cohesion strategies
• Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) professionals

📅 Program Overview