Dear Colleague,

We have exciting news to share with you! The Global Land Programme (GLP) IPO will move to its new home at the University of Maryland’s Department of Geographical Sciences in the United States on 1 February 2023. This transition was made possible by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant in support of the land science community as a key part of international global change research infrastructure.

By transitioning to the United States, GLP will collaborate with new partners of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its Land-Cover and Land-Use Change Program, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). 

We are deeply appreciative for the generosity and camaraderie shown by the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) and the University of Bern in hosting and supporting us over the past 7 years. We also gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Swiss Academies of Sciences (SCNAT) and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) without which we could not have grown and sustained the strong and vibrant community we share. 

We will now continue to build on more than 20 years of producing knowledge about land systems as solutions to global change, advancing co-design, and inter- and transdisciplinary methods, and strengthening land system science as a sustainability science, to help policymakers and the public understand what is at stake at this critical moment in global development.

Looking forward we’ll have many new opportunities to work together: the 5th Open Science Meeting in the Americas in 2024, growing our Early Career Network (ECN), convening policy-relevant land dialogues and establishing strategic partnerships, and organizing synthesis and agenda setting activities to develop key LSS methods, products, tools, and open data, and to advance LSS knowledge. 

Wherever you are and however you can join us – as working groups, nodal offices, fellows, and members – we are looking forward to continuing to grow the land system science community with you! 

On behalf of the GLP IPO and Scientific Steering Committee,
Ariane, Navin, and Pete

21 February 2023
20:00-21:00
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)

In this webinar, authors of The Land Gap Report join the the Global Land Programme (GLP) and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) to share their findings that countries’ climate pledges rely on unrealistic amounts of land-based carbon removal. The Land Gap Report, published in 2022, shows that if one tallies up all the land proposed for offsets in national climate plans, the total needed amounts to 1.2 billion hectares, which is equivalent to the total amount of land that is in cropland today. These offset commitments cannot be achieved without significant negative impacts on livelihoods, land rights, and ecosystems.

Presenters:

Kate Dooley, University of Melbourne
Brendan Mackey, Griffith University
Jens Friis Lund, University of Copenhagen

16 February 2023
14:00-15:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)

The BeModeLS working group coordinator and steering committee have developed a set of aims and objectives, as shown on their webpage. One of these is to foster an inclusive, active, diverse and cooperative community of social-ecological land system modellers. Join them on 16 February 2023 for an online workshop to share your views and help shape the working group.

We have added Mirza Hasanuzzaman and Josef Settele to the list of GLP Members who appear on Clarivate’s Highly-Cited Researchers 2022 list, bringing the total count to 31 members!

Explaining the stickiness of supply chain relations in the Brazilian soybean trade
A new article in Global Environmental Change identifies factors determining local stickiness in Brazil's soy supply chain
Read more

Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe 17 February,  9.00-15.00 Central European Time
Africa, Europe and the Americas. 22 February, 17.00-20.00 Central European Time

This is a new type of scientific congress aimed at bridging the science-policy-practice nexus for achieving sustainable development. The overall goal of the Transformation Labs is to identify research that can help sustainable socio-ecological transformations within planetary boundaries. The Labs are supported by a grant from the Novo Nordic Foundation and supported by the Future Earth network. The Transformation Labs process consists of five online events: a kick-off event (times shown above), three sessions following the Delphi method, and a closing event. All events will take place twice to accommodate all time zones.