LUD Day: Initiative Visioning Dialogue

The Land Use Dialogue Initiative, launched in 2016, was designed to provide practical learning on landscape approaches to environmental problems. As the initiative continues to hold relevance in the environmental sector to provide an approach to dialogue to support landscape approach implementation, the initiative has moved past a “pilot” phase and into a phase of refining and scaling up the LUD model. In 2019, TFD convened a group of LUD partners, TFD Steering Committee Members, and experts in landscape restoration and landscape governance, to reflect on lessons and future directions for the initiative.

The day-long initiative visioning dialogue, held in New Haven, CT USA brought together 44 participants from around the world representing indigenous peoples, civil society, companies, and academia. Participants included TFD Steering Committee, LUD partners, including representatives from IUCN, Apremavi, and Yale-Environmental Learning and Training Initiative, LUD Research Fellows, and Yale Forestry and Environmental Studies Faculty and Staff. Dialogue objectives included:

• To explore the practical implementation of a landscape approach and what role dialogue plays in that;
• To reflect, and potentially refine, TFD’s Land Use Dialogue model;
• To set future direction for the LUD initiative with particular emphasis on scaling-up through developing online and in-person training and support materials.

See the Co-Chair’s summary for details on reflections, identified learnings and dialogue outcomes.