Policy links

Model Forests provide a voluntary and neutral platform for national government representatives and local organizations to discuss the landscape’s sustainability and resource management issues. By facilitating dialogue among diverse landscape stakeholders, Model Forests create opportunities to strengthen governance and collaborative landscape planning. 

The link between national policymakers and local operations provides Model Forest partners with the opportunity to influence national and subnational policy and planning, contributing, for example, to provincial fire-risk management, climate adaptation and disaster risk management plans. 

Model Forests also serve as cost-effective testing grounds for approaches that governments could use to meet international commitments and voluntary goals, including

• Commitments under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and work to both strengthen pre-2030 forest commitments and communicate 2035 forest targets in nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
• The UN Convention of Biological Diversity’s Global Biodiversity Framework, including its targets on ecological restoration and on protecting 30 percent of land and water by 2030 through Protected Areas and Other Effective Area Based Conservation Measures (OECMs).
• Implementation of the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution.
• The Global Forest Goals of the UN Forum on Forests which provides a global framework for actions at all levels to sustainably manage forests and trees and to halt deforestation and forest degradation. The goals are conjoined with the UN Global Goals (the Sustainable Development Goals).
• The Bonn Challenge, a global goal of bringing 350 million hectares of degraded and deforested landscapes into restoration by 2030.

The UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, a global initiative that aims to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean by 2030.