GLF Live – Details, episodes & analysis

Millets are a type of ancient grain that humanity has cultivated for over 10,000 years. These hardy, dryland crops include pearl, finger, foxtail and proso millets, which are grown across South Asia and Africa, as well as in Eurasia, North America and Australia.

But despite being climate-resilient and nutritious, they’re in steady decline and often overlooked for more commercial crops. Experts warn that we must act quickly to conserve the diversity of the world’s millets before it is lost forever.

Millets are high in micronutrients and fiber, gluten-free and have a low glycemic index, with a higher nutritional content than refined cereals such as rice, wheat or corn. They can also grow in very difficult, dry conditions with poor soils and at temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius – which makes them a prime candidate for feeding tomorrow’s hotter world.

However, millets are difficult to process, and while more reliable than most other crops from year to year, their productivity can be low overall, especially under unpredictable conditions caused by the climate crisis. Still, experts believe millets can play a huge part in filling nutritional gaps in the global food systems – if get the care they need.

The United Nations has declared 2023 the International Year of Millets (IYM). Here on GLF Live, we close off the year with this episode, where we’re joined by scientist Chrispus Oduori and chef Wisdom Abiro to learn how we can bring these precious crops back to the mainstream.

From deadly cyclones to devastating droughts, Africa is already grappling with the effects of the climate crisis, which are being exacerbated by large-scale land degradation. At the same time, the continent is also home to one of the world’s fastest-growing populations, posing major challenges for its food security.

One important way to ensure a reliable and nutritious supply of food is by protecting crop diversity from being lost – which is why the Crop Trust has partnered with five African genebanks through Seeds for Resilience, a five-year project providing financial and technical support to safeguard the national seed collections of Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia.

In this episode, we speak with Daniel Ashie Kotey, acting director of Ghana’s national genebank, CSIR-PGRRI, and Nora Castañeda-Álvarez, who leads Seeds for Resilience at the Crop Trust, to learn how the project aims to bolster the country’s long-term food security and climate resilience.

Africa faces a dilemma: how can it continue to develop and deliver better lives to its people without drastically growing its carbon footprint – especially given that it’s already being hit hard by the climate crisis?

Some African leaders are still considering investing in gas and oil exploration, even though climate experts insist that countries should instead focus on expanding their renewable energy sectors. 

In this episode, originally released in July 2022, we examine how these different agendas can be reconciled – and what it will take to achieve a just energy transition for Africa. Joining us is Hamira Kobusingye, a climate and health activist from Uganda, and Davina Ngei, the communications manager at Global Women’s Network for the Energy Transition from Kenya.

What does it mean to be a leader in sustainable finance? In this episode, we chat with Ayesha Khan, regional director of Acumen Pakistan, and Maria Amália Souza, founder of the Casa Socio-Environmental Fund – two of the women celebrated in this year’s 16 Women Restoring the Earth campaign, which honors and promotes the incredible work of a selection of women over the past year.

From supporting grassroots projects in South America to investing in more resilient food systems in Pakistan, tune in to discover how these two women use finance for positive social and environmental change.

About halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole lies the world’s most important library of seed samples: the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It’s somewhat of a backup disk for the global food supply, where an extraordinary diversity of crucial crops can be retrieved if these resources are lost at regular genebanks.

In honor of its 15th anniversary, the Vault has opened its doors to new seed deposits – and to mark the occasion, we’re chatting with Åsmund Asdal, who coordinates its operations and management.

In this episode, find out what resides in the vault’s chambers, the importance of the Seed Vault’s mission and deposit, and what this all could mean for the world’s food future.

War and conflict can have farther-reaching and longer-lasting impacts on our planet than meets the eye. Aside from the destruction of landscapes and human livelihoods, other less apparent costs include military pollution, the curtailing of beneficial programs and projects, mass displacement of humans, and major shifts in economic and social priorities once turmoil subsides. War can cost countries over 40% of their GDP – funds that could have otherwise been invested in protecting the environment or pulling citizens out of poverty.

In this episode, first aired in April 2022, we speak with Ukrainian deputy minister of environmental protection and natural resources Iryna Stavchuk and conflict and peacebuilding expert Moosa Elayah to examine what’s happening in different conflict areas – and the toll these conflicts are taking on our planet.

Listen back to episode 1 to learn how the ongoing war in Ukraine is affecting global food security.

Rural women have enormous potential to produce and scale up solutions to the climate crisis, food insecurity and poverty, but they often still lack the resources and recognition they need to succeed.

That’s why Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN) created the world’s first framework measuring and monetizing women’s empowerment – the W+ standard. Developed with women in rural Kenya and Nepal, the framework provides metrics and procedures to quantify, verify and monetize women’s empowerment across six areas: time, health, education and knowledge, food security, income and assets, and leadership.

In this episode, we’re joined by WOCAN executive director Jeannette Gurung, and the founder and CEO of Ecosystem Regeneration Associates, Hannah Simmons, to learn what that means in practice and how the framework is being used to make climate finance work for women.

In 2005, member states of the UN began developing a framework that was meant to ensure the protection of the world’s most important, carbon-sequestering, life-giving forests.

Given that many of these ecosystems are located in low- and medium-income countries, the framework is designed such that rich countries provide financial rewards for forest protection, coupling conservation and climate change mitigation with economic growth in parts of the world that need it most. In 2013, the framework was solidified and given the name reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, more commonly known by its acronym REDD+.

However, since its inception, REDD+ has developed something of a controversial reputation in the climate sector, revolving around one main question: If the framework is working as it should, then why is there still so much deforestation?

Ten years on from the framework’s inception, this episode brings together three REDD+ experts to discuss the framework, what REDD+ has achieved for emissions reductions and livelihoods, if its initial design is still relevant, and how it could be adjusted to work better in the future.

Read this report from IUFRO on a decade of REDD+: https://www.iufro.org/science/gfep/follow-up-studies/biodiversity-forest-management-and-redd-2021/ 

Register for GLF–Luxembourg Finance for Nature: https://events.globallandscapesforum.org/6th-glf-investment-case-symposium/ 

The ocean covers 70 percent of our planet and supplies half of the oxygen we breathe. Unfortunately, we haven’t taken great care of it: the climate crisis and our burning of fossil fuels are changing its weather-regulating systems, raising its waters to threatening heights and acidifying its pH balance beyond what its species can survive.

And yet, recent climate action has primarily focused on land, leaving the ocean neglected and missing the science, policy and funding it needs in order to continue sustaining its life – and ours.

In this episode, originally aired in December 2021, we interview Dorothée Herr, a preliminary expert on ocean policy, about how to rebalance the ‘green’ and the ‘blue’ in the context of climate change and what research, funding, decisions and developments are needed most to curb the degradation of our waters.

Last year, Landscape News ran its Routes to Roots series on forest restoration, zooming out to see the extent of global efforts to bring more forests back onto this planet, then zooming in on the various methods by which that is being done.

Now, we’re revisiting the topic at the start of 2023 – yet another year in which we can say that forest restoration is needed more than ever to achieve climate, biodiversity and human rights goals. In this episode, we’re joined by acclaimed young forester Kandi, the interim CEO of forest research institutes CIFOR-ICRAF Robert Nasi, and the chair of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and head of his namesake lab Thomas Crowther to discuss what’s most promising and most needed for forest restoration this year.