One month ago, I was fortunate enough to participate in the Youth in Landscape Initiative as part of the 2015 Global Landscapes Forum (GLF). While I expected to learn quite a bit and meet some wonderful people, I had no idea how amazing an experience it would be. I have never felt quite as empowered as a young person as I did then and I am so excited to see how we carry that energy forward.
I worked with 9 other young innovators as part of the Landscape Restoration team focusing on empowering under-represented groups to participate in restoration efforts in the Ethiopian Highlands of the Blue Nile River Basin in Africa to improve both the local environment but also help the millions living downstream. Upon presenting our idea to the dragons in the Dragons’ Den as part of the GLF, two things struck me; the first was how lucky I am to be able to work with such brilliant people and how we truly have the chance to apply our idea in real life.
To work on applied conservation and restoration has always been a goal of mine and that goal is the primary reason I am currently a PhD student. My work focuses on the Nature Improvement Area Initiative in England and the variety of management strategies applied as part of that landscape designation. As a result of my work, I have come to realize how important the human-environment relationship is and how essential it is to explore the character of that relationship in any conservation or restoration effort.
The beauty of the Youth in Landscape Initiative is that by bringing together diverse groups of youth, it allows for truly innovative ideas that draw on a variety of experiences within the human-environment relationship. Our team consisted of people from all over the world working in many different disciplines but with a shared passion for restoration and an interest in actually applying our ideas. This is, I believe, the key to our success.
The idea that we ultimately presented to the dragons is Land: a people-centered, open-access toolkit with both online and offline components that puts local people at the heart of landscape restoration. I cannot overstate the time and effort that the team, with invaluable help from our mentors, put in to create this. I am incredibly proud of our efforts and our results. It was truly an extraordinary journey.
NB: We are hoping to take this idea further by joining with a partner engaged in an ongoing restoration project within the Ethiopian highlands in order to test the usability of the toolkit. If you are interested in our concept, please get in touch and I will be happy to provide further information.
Marie Longnecker is one of the 10 young champions who worked on the “ Landscape restoration ” challenge with Youth program’s partner: WLE (CGIAR).
Learn more about the Global Landscapes Forum Youth program, meet our 50 youth champions, discover the 5 Landscapes challenges they took up and the solutions they developed and pitched at the Dragon’s Den on 6th December 2015, in Paris.
