Co-Chairs’ Summary: Land Use Dialogue Day in New Haven, Connecticut

The Land Use Dialogue (LUD) initiative is designed to support landscape approaches to environmental problems. The initiative builds from The Forests Dialogue’s 18 years of experience organizing dialogues around the world and network of practitioners engaged in dialogue. Yet, as the LUD aims to support landscape-level re-occurring dialogues, TFD has adapted the traditional dialogue model and at times taken on new roles and forms of engagement. As the initiative moves past a pilot stage to scale up the LUD model, there is need to reflect on lessons learned and future directions for the initiative.

 

Dialogue objectives included:

• To explore the practical implementation of a landscape approach and what role

dialogue plays in that;

• To reflect on TFD’s Land Use Dialogue model to supporting a landscape

approach;

• To set future direction for the LUD initiative with particular emphasis on the TFDELTI collaboration to create training and support materials for LUDs in key

landscapes.

 

The day-long dialogue, held in New Haven, CT USA, brought together 44 participants

from around the world representing indigenous peoples organizations, 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.