GLA - Philippines 3 forested landscapes Forests in the Philippines have been in steady decline, which has a tremendous impact on millions of people who depend on these forests and the vital ecosystem services they provide. The program focuses on three landscapes: Sierra Madre Mountain Range (Luzon), CDO-Tagoloan river basins landscape continuum and part of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). These landscapes not only serve as homes to many communities - including indigenous peoples - who depend on them for their daily subsistence, but are also critical for the adjacent provinces and regions. All three landscapes are subjected to forest and habitat degradation, which threatens the sustainability of livelihoods, food security, water provisioning and biodiversity. The landscapes face multiple sources of threats, such as uncontrolled resource extraction, unsustainable and overlapping land use and militarization/conflict. Overcoming these threats is hampered by limited opportunities of local communities to influence decision making on sustainable governance. Policy makers are often detached from the ground and are thus unable to formulate effective policy reforms for sustainable development. The Long-term goal of the program is to safeguard the International Public Goods (climate, water, food security and biodiversity) of forest-dependent and indigenous communities in the target communities. This would be possible if these forest landscapes are conserved and restored, and the different stakeholders agree to manage the resources in a sustainable way including respecting the tenure and resource use rights of forest dependent communities. The program aims to achieve this by strengthening the lobby and advocacy capacity of civil society organisations as well as forest-dependent and indigenous communities. Forest dependent communities and civil society have an opportunity to influence existing policies and practice through thorough and consistent lobby work at the local and national level. Where relevant, the programme will also develop a proof of concept by creating pilot-models of sustainable landscape management which would benefit forest dependent communities. In 2017, TBI will organise two activities in the Philippines: a landscape course for CSOs and the organisation of a national environmental forum. For the development and implementation of these activities, TBI will find a partner organisation in the Philippines. Consultations with a possible partner are ongoing. (1) Landscape course: TBI intends to organise a course on the landscape approach. CSOs and other relevant organisations, can participate in the course. The course will be adapted to the roles of CSOs in landscapes and in the GLA and should be in line with the capacity needs that were identified by the CSOs. After participation in the course participants will have a good understanding of the theory and practice of landscape approaches and will be able to apply these lessons in the GLA landscapes, where possible and appropriate. (2) Organise National Environmental Forum: To support decisions making processes at the national policy level, TBI intends to support the establishment of a national forum of experts and stakeholders on sustainable governance of forested landscapes, both from science and practice. This should be done in collaboration with organisations in the Philippines. Naturally, CSOs will be part of the forum and could be involved in the preparations of meetings (e.g. preparing position papers). Through the GLA, we can also support and capacitate CSOs to participate effectively in such forums/platforms.