Learning from a living archive: Local communities owning change, monitoring progress and communicating the impact

On the 4th of May 2021, the Forestry Technical Network (FTN) hosted a webinar organised by the Drylands Forestry Team (NFO) titled: Learning from a living archive: Local communities owning change, monitoring progress and communicating the impact.

The webinar worked to document, systematise and share successful experiences and strategies for sustainable management of drylands to avoid new initiatives from “reinventing the wheel.” This is the first in a series of webinars that aims to showcase participatory documentation tools that have proven to effectively disseminate knowledge from local communities in dryland regions to the rest of the world. 

Details from the webinar

During the first session, participants were presented with innovative participatory documentation tools that local communities could use to take ownership of the change-making process. It featured several presentations from guest speakers on a range of topics including:

• Ms. Loes Witteveen, Lead Researcher Communication, Participation & Social Ecological Learning, Wageningen University: Exploring research component of knowledge management cycle, focusing on portrayal, participation and visual knowledge capitalisation
• Ms. Fidaa F. Haddad, Drylands Forestry Officer, Forestry Division, FAO: Making every voice count for adaptive management through participatory documentation methodologies
• Mr. Phil Malone, Co-Founder of Access Agriculture: Sharing local knowledge across continents

As this series continues, FTN hopes to upscale the approach globally by presenting the evidence of change taking place at the local level to higher regional and international arenas.

Up next

The next webinar in the series, Building up: planned, participatory and integrated land use management, will take place on 17 June 2021, 12:30 – 14:00 CEST.

The webinar has been organized on the occasion of the International Desertification and Drought Day to explore and celebrate ongoing initiatives and tools that are being developed and trialed to support the decision-making and monitoring of restoration activities for healthy lands. The event will feature presentations from:

• Ms Fidaa F Haddad, Dryland Forestry Officer, NFO, FAO presenting the Dryland Restoration Initiatives Platform 
• Mr Ronald Vargas, Land and Water Officer, NSL, FAO presenting the Status of the Global Soil Salinity Map 
• Mr Moctar Sacande, Action Against Desertification Coordinator, NFO, FAO presenting the Restoration Mosaic in practice
• Mr Feras Ziadat, Technical Officer, NSL, FAO presenting Integrated Land Use Planning and Management for Ecosystem Resoration

 If you are interested in attending the event, please contact Fidaa F. Haddad.

Photos by Juliet Braslow/CIAT