From the forests of Brazil’s Pantanal to the Australian Outback, 2024 marked a critical year of exploration and reflection for 1000L as we continued to strengthen existing partnerships and build new connections in landscapes worldwide. Together, we showcased inspiring stories of landscape innovation on a global stage and collaborated with partners to outline a new vision to forge our initiative’s future. We designed, tested, and delivered new learning resources focused on expanding literacy and expertise in integrated landscape management (ILM), and set the stage for a new generation of landscape leaders.
And now, we’re just one month into 2025, and our team has already hit the ground running!
Take a look at last year’s highlights and how we plan to keep the momentum going in the year to come!
We brought stories of hope to the world stage at COP 16 in Riyadh.
In December 2024, 1000L partners joined forces at UNCCD COP 16 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to champion the power of integrated landscape management in the fight against land degradation and desertification. There, our team debuted Hope Springs: Stories of Resilience in Drylands to an audience of delegates from all over the world. This powerful short documentary highlighted ILM’s transformative potential in combating desertification and its impact on global environmental crises. Through the lens of diverse communities in Kenya, Niger, Spain, Australia, and South Africa, the film and accompanying multimedia story showcased inspiring solutions to land degradation, drought, biodiversity loss, and climate challenges. The film’s vignettes emphasized the power of locally led partnerships, innovative water and land management practices, and the shared vision of sustainable development to sustain an ever-changing world.
Coming in 2025: We’re excited to continue our Landscapes in Action series, which will highlight agricultural and community resilience across India’s central highlands. Stay tuned for its premiere, and visit our stories page to immerse yourself in engaging and impactful landscape narratives!
We showcased the business benefits of integrated landscape management through a collaboration with Forbes.
In early 2024, 1000L partnered with Forbes to spotlight stories of leadership, impact, and innovation that focused on the power of landscape partnerships to propel local economies and improve livelihoods. Over four months, Forbes featured stories across the 1000L network, from a locally led carbon credit project in Kenya’s Chyulu Hills to regenerative farms in Western Australia that demonstrate the promise of a landscape restoration industry.
The series also featured perspectives from prominent thought leaders in climate, land use, and economic development, including 1000L partners Kirsten Dunlop, CEO of Climate-KIC, Willem Ferwerda of Commonland, and Dr. Sara Scherr, co-founder of 1000L and EcoAgriculture Partners. The series garnered more than 106,000 views from business leaders and introduced 1000L to a whole new audience.
Coming in 2025: More inspiring stories of resilience and restoration from our landscape partners! Stay up to date with more landscape storytelling on the 1000L blog!
We laid the groundwork for the future at our annual co-design workshop.
In June 2024, 1000L brought together 37 participants from 23 organizations in West Virginia, USA, to reflect on and advance the initiative’s work. Participants refined the initiative’s theory of change and explored ways to accelerate the adoption of ILM. They also debated approaches to foster inclusive governance and mobilize sustainable financing to support landscape partnerships. The group emerged from the workshop equipped with new ideas for capacity building, policy advocacy, and collaborative management. Learn more about the workshop here.
Coming in 2025: Time to turn strategy into action! We’re taking what we learned in 2024 to develop a landscape learning network that expands the community of practice for sharing ILM best practices. We’ll also dive deep into how different systems within landscapes interact–from food systems to economic systems and everything in between. Over the course of the year, we’ll build a framework for supporting landscape partnerships to strengthen connections between these systems on their path to holistic landscape restoration.
We launched the 1000L Tools and Resources Catalogue, an adaptable suite of resources for implementing integrated landscape management.
Developed in early 2024, the 1000L Tools and Resources Catalogue provides landscape leaders with powerful training modules, resources, and services that make the landscape management process more effective and inclusive. Landscape partnerships, local landscape practitioners, business leaders, financial institutions, and others working within the context of landscape management will find this catalogue filled with over 30 adaptable tools and resources that they can apply to any landscape.
The catalogue includes twenty-six learning modules that provide knowledge, skills, tools, and case examples for practicing ILM. With support from organizations like Rikolto, Commonland, Rainforest Alliance, the International Model Forest Network, and more, our capacity-strengthening team designed, tested, and delivered these modules to landscapes worldwide. Many of these are already used by landscape support organizations, and seven have been fully field-tested. Some of these modules are available in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, and the team hopes to expand multilingual access for all modules in 2025.
In December, we held an official catalogue launch webinar where over 160 participants joined us for an inside look at some of our most user-friendly resources, including Terraso’s StoryMaps and our ILM learning modules.
Coming in 2025: Even more leading and learning! The 1000L capacity-strengthening design team will dive deep into the knowledge and achievements gleaned during the rollout of the learning modules. Stay tuned for our upcoming webinar series, where we’ll zoom in on key resources related to finance, capacity strengthening, and digital technology to support landscape transformation! Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to hear about our trainings and events!
We partnered with Regen10 to develop an action plan for regenerative landscapes
In our productive partnership with Regen10, we developed a key report that outlines a strategic framework to revolutionize global food systems by focusing on regenerative landscapes. It emphasizes the need for collaborative efforts among stakeholders, including governments, businesses, and communities, to promote sustainable agricultural practices, enhance biodiversity, and combat climate change. The strategy highlights the importance of aligning food production with ecological health, social equity, and economic viability. It advocates for measurable targets, scalable solutions, and financial incentives to drive the transition towards regenerative practices, fostering resilience and long-term sustainability in food systems globally. We also worked with Regen10 to define landscape outcomes, and how to develop a learning network that supports the delivery of integrated landscape management. Our partners at IUCN also collaborated with us to catalogue IUCN landscape tools and resources and learning module development for Nature-based Solutions.
Coming in 2025: Join our webinar in March to learn more about it and provide your input.
We made great strides in building new finance pathways for landscapes in Peru.
This year our finance and policy team reached an important milestone: a full pilot test of our landscape finance accelerator (LFA) in Alto Mayo, Peru. An LFA is a framework that helps landscapes develop holistic finance strategies to strengthen local economies and livelihoods while also conserving nature. Together with Conservation International and Capital Continuum advisors, the project team developed a phased landscape finance strategy that aligns existing and new instruments to overcome different kinds of financial barriers landscape actors face. The Alto Mayo pilot provided an opportunity to adapt and refine this process in a real-world context, addressing region-specific challenges while contributing insights that will help us strengthen our approach.
Coming in 2025: We’re excited to launch our lessons-learned document in February and build on these insights as we continue to refine and test the LFA with other landscapes worldwide. We’re also in the early stages of a project that could strengthen the link between landscape finance and indigenous finance communities.
Terraso toured the globe, connecting with local leaders and landscape partners along the way.
2024 was a whirlwind of growth, impact, and innovation for Terraso, 1000L’s digital ILM platform developed by partner Tech Matters. As the saying goes, “Time flies when you’re building tools to save the world.” 2024 found the Terraso team traveling to support their work—from the Pantanal in Brazil to the heart of Guyana and the bustling streets of Nairobi. Along the way, they presented at conferences, hosted workshops, and trained communities, all while growing and improving the Terraso toolkit. They introduced the coming LandPKS Soil ID at the Society for Range Management conference in Nevada, USA, and joined the 1000L capacity-strengthening team in the Pantanal to introduce Terraso to landscape leaders working in the Latin American Model Forest Network. In pursuing the LandPKS project, they also gathered with leaders in soil health at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, to collaborate on tools for farmers to provide science-based recommendations for crop selection, fertilization, and management practices.
Coming in 2025: The Terraso team is determined to build on this momentum. Based on user feedback, new features like autosave for story maps are already in the works. They are also refining the LandPKS Soil ID app for its global debut and planning even more opportunities to connect with users and partners on the ground. By harnessing the power of technology, community, and shared vision, Terraso is turning challenges into opportunities to build a more resilient and sustainable future.
Thank you to our supporters!
This work wouldn’t be possible without the field-leading foundations, programs, and public institutions that have united to fund the collaboration. Current funders include the IKEA, Laudes, Target, Hitz Family, COmON foundations, and Regen10. Schmidt Futures and the Frey Charitable, Cisco, Patrick J. McGovern, and Skoll Foundations fund the Terraso digital platform. Other grantors include the Daniel and Nina Carasso, Cariplo, Mulago, Rockefeller, and Sall Family foundations. The United Nations Development Programme; the Government of the Netherlands Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality; the Global Environment Facility; the U.S. Department of Agriculture; and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management provide strategic support to design and test our innovations.
