Sustainable Land and Water Programme – Sustainable Trade Initiative
The Sustainable Land and Water Program was launched on Friday 28 February 2014 in The Hague. The event consisted of an expert and engagement meeting in the morning and a public launch in the afternoon. The expert meeting convened a wide range of experts in the fields of water management, agriculture, supply chains and many more. Speakers from both the public and private sector presented their vision on the program approach and invited participants to share their knowledge, experience and ideas for the future development of the initiative.
Rob Swartbol, Director General International Cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, marked the official public launch of the SLWP. Mr. Swartbol stressed the need of an integrated landscape approach for the sustainable supply of natural resources. He expressed his confidence that the Sustainable Land and Water Program will boost the up-scaling and expansion of the landscape approach worldwide.
Supplying food, feed, fuel & fibre to 9 billion people in 2050, without depleting the earth’s
natural resources is a critical challenge for the coming years. Increasingly, farmers, extracting industries, tourists’ facilities and expanding populations have competing claims on scarce land
and water resources. Many areas in the world are progressively threatened by issues such as water shortages, soil depletion, climate change, poverty and food insecurity. These issues are often interrelated.
In many threatened areas the public and private organizations – be it NGO’s, governments, farmers or companies – do not share information nor work effectively together to manage the natural resources under stress.
The Sustainable Land and Water Program (SLWP) aims to bring together the interests, knowledge and power of public and private stakeholders in selected “resource vulnerable” regions. It will develop a business case to jointly work, and invest in sustainable land and water management. In order to safeguard threatened long term supply of natural resources for current and future users. We believe that adding business drivers to sustainable land and water management, creates a compelling case for effective public private cooperation to mitigate risks of depletion and poverty.
Fast Track Landscapes
Organizing public-private partnerships, calls for knowledge of supply chains and involvementof local stakeholders is needed, in particular the ability to help parties with seemingly conflicting interests to work together. IDH will makes use of the knowledge and experience of Dutch companies and organizations in the fields of land and water.
The Sustainable Land and Water Program will start projects in two regions where IDH is already active in its sector programs and a start has already been made in cooperating with companies, governments and other parties. This way, they can build upon existing initiatives. Thus, the program can quickly gain experience with this new integrated approach and apply lessons learned in other regions.
Instructions and Template for Long Listing Landscape Projects
The Sustainable Land and Water Program (SLWP) now invites interested organisations to submit landscape project case descriptions that are relevant within the scope of the SLWP. The initial long list of potential cases will be the basis for selecting the next projects that will be integrated in the Program. The projects need to be implemented at a landscape scale and must be concisely described according to the criteria listed.
For more information and the criteria for submitting landscape project case descriptions, please visit the website of IDH – Sustainable Trade Initiative.