( Winning a landscapes challenge )
‘And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change
our way of
caring about ourselves’
(Under pressure, Queen, 1981)
Such words are even more powerful when sang together by Freddy Mercury and David Bowie. Why should I quote a song of the 80’s in this blogpost? Why these particular verses? Nothing to deal with nostalgia or romanticism, just the reality of our time. Actually, we are living a hard moment, globally: we led our planet to a struggling point. We carried on for so long a blind and greedy exploitation of the natural resources, all so precious for us!
Now we arrived almost at the finish line: we are the only specimen on this world that is so foolish to put in peril its own safety and health. We are therefore at ‘the edge of the night’, but, fortunately, there are still people moved by love, passion and motivation who decide to fight for a new reality, for a fairer and more sustainable world, for a promising and inspiring future.
At the Youth in Landscapes initiative of the Global Landscapes Forum in Paris, last December 2015, a group of 50 young people from all over the world, led by a great team of facilitators and organizers and accompanied by some great experts as mentors, have been the representative of those who through their love and passion face real landscapes challenges.
I had the honour and the luck of being one of those 50 and I suddenly felt part of a big puzzle, with an amazing design as final result. At an intensive four day workshop, we were been invited to reflect on some worrying issues that affect our environment and ecosystems, therefore impacting on livelihoods. The group that I belonged to was addressing the ‘Rights and tenure challenge’, or rather how to guarantee social inclusion and promote local livelihood in projects like REDD+.
We worked on it very hard: at the venue of the workshop, at a bistrot in front of a glass of wine, in the metro, during an international homemade dinner, very early in the morning while finding new energy in a cup of coffee, through chat messages and a mailing list. Every one of us brought his/her skills, knowledge and willingness to collaborate and I think these have been the milestone ingredients for a winning recipe.
What a marvelous melting pot of accents and, moreover, of experiences in that hub in Paris! I was delighted by understanding how many realities I could meet in such a short period, but I was even more amazed in experiencing how it is enriching to learn new important things all thanks to moments of sincere and convinced sharing.
All the different characteristics that made us a multifaceted truth have been the successful points and the strengths that let us approach the solution to the five Landscapes challenges. Real challenges, on which experts, scientist, decision makers, society, etc. rack their brains every day.
Maybe the joyful atmosphere and the great fellow travelers made the experience somehow more easygoing, but the charge of responsibility was high and the pressure was madly stressful. But I have to say, with hindsight, that such a sensation, feeling ‘under pressure’ did not make me lose my motivation, my passion and my willingness to be part of the solution.
‘Of course’, people would say, ‘you are still young’! Exactly, I would answer: youth is such a resourceful dimension still not enough explored! Young people can have fresh and innovative idea and at the same time are ready to learn and to apprehend every time more and more. Their idealism and positivity are still almost intact and could give a new wave of energy in questions which are old and seem to be stuck in a dead-end street… if you only let them transmit you all these positive vibes!
Too naive?! No, we are just aware that we are about to come into the future, it is at our doorstep, the future that will be our present, the present that my generation should care about. We are just becoming familiar with the reality that we are going to live, to own, and we are convinced that what we wisely build today, will be the pillar of a better tomorrow.
We were all there, so diverse, but joined by the same objective: how couldn’t you believe that if we unite the efforts like we have done at the YIL in Paris we won’t win the challenge?
‘Can’t we give ourselves
one more chance?
Why can’t we give love
that one more chance?‘
(Under pressure, Queen, 1981)
Alessia Portaccio is one of the 10 young champions who worked on the “ Rights and Tenure” Landscape challenge with Youth program’s partner: CIFOR.
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.
