The International Consortium on Landslides (ICL), the Global Promotion Committee of the International Programme on Landslides (GPC/IPL), and Slovenian ICL members (University of Ljubljana and Geological survey of Slovenia) organized the Fourth World Landslide Forum in Ljubljana from May 29 to June 2, 2017 (Mikos et al. 2017). The high-level panel discussion consisting of panelists from the signatory organizations of the ISDR-ICL Sendai Partnerships 2015–2025 proposed the 2017 Ljubljana Declaration on landslide risk reduction-contributing to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (Sassa 2017a) and it was adopted by 588 participants of WLF4 from 52 countries and 7 United Nations and International Organizations. The declaration adopted the organization of the Fifth World Landslide Forum (WLF5) in Kyoto, Japan, 2020 (Sassa 2018c) and the concept to establish the Kyoto 2020 Commitment (KC2020) for global promotion of understanding and reducing landslide disaster risk (Sassa 2018a) as the development of the Sendai Partnerships 2015–2025 (Sassa 2017b).

In order to establish and further develop the Kyoto 2020 Commitment at the Fifth World Landslide Forum in 2020, Kyoto, Japan, the Board of Representatives of ICL members decided two new initiatives: (1) creation of a new category of ICL memberships “ICL associates” with 20% of membership fee of the full members and (2) creation of national networks in major landslide countries to strengthen the firm basis for ICL members in each country.

The ICL, established in January 2002, is an international organization editing and publishing the Landslides: Journal of the International Consortium on Landslides (Sassa 2018b). However, ICL had never had national platforms/networks. The objective of KC2020 is to establish a global, long-term, and stable framework for understanding and reducing landslide disaster risks (Sassa 2018d). The ICL is a diverse group of members with different backgrounds from government ministries, academia, and private companies. The cooperation of ICL members within each country has been very weak.

Soon after 2017 Ljubljana Declaration and ICL Board of Representative meeting in Ljubljana, Italian colleagues who participated in the adoption of the 2017 Ljubljana Declaration during the Fourth World Landslide Forum have worked to establish ICL Italian Network. The progress of ICL Italian network was reported in Landslides (Casagli and Tofani 2018).

Japanese members of ICL have also worked to establish its own network, ICL-Japan with the ICL headquarters in Kyoto, Japan, included. The group consists of 17 members as of September 2018, which are three full members, 12 supporters, two associates, and the ICL headquarters. The locations of ICL-Japan members are shown in Fig. 1. The explanation of each member is shown in Table 1 in ANNEX of this issue (Sassa and Konagai 2018e). The ICL-Japan has set up the advisory group for effective activities to support the local organizing committee of the Fifth World Landslide Forum and the launching the Kyoto 2020 Commitment for global promotion of understanding and reducing landslide disaster risk as a host country. The introductions of all members of ICL-Japan and priority actions that they are willing to take to contribute to Kyoto 2020 Commitment are listed in Table 2 of Sassa and Konagai (2018e). Currently, the members of ICL Japan network total 17, and headquarter at various locations over the entire nation including Tokyo (8), Yokote, Akita (1), Niigata (1), Kyoto (1), Kanazawa (1), Nagoya (1), Osaka (1), Matsue, Shimane (1), Nishinomiya (1), and Matsuyama (1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Locations of members of ICL Japan network. Numbers assigned to members are listed in Table 2 (ANNEX)

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Call for ICL associates

ICL together with ICL supporting organizations plans to establish a global, wide-range, and long-term cooperation framework for landslide disaster risk reduction in close cooperation with each other (Kyoto 2020 Commitment). The core of the cooperation platform is the monthly full color journal Landslides with neither manuscript submission fee nor full color printing fee. All members of KC2020 are invited to contribute their research, technical developments, field investigations, and announcements of their meetings and their publications to the new category of News/Kyoto Commitment. The period from submission to publication in this category “News” is very fast.

All ICL members and non-ICL members are also invited to contribute to categories of review papers, original papers, Recent Landslides, and Technical Notes. Review process and standards are completely the same for all submitted papers.

The journal Landslides works as the platform of KC2020. ICL will distribute Landslides free of charge to all ICL members. To spread ICL members’ network, ICL has established ICL Associates in 2018. The membership fee is 20% of ICL full members; 600 USD for high-income countries, 400 USD for upper middle-income countries, and 200 USD for lower middle-income countries. ICL is examining to create 100 USD associates for low-income countries from 2019. These membership fee categories are based on the country classifications by income level (World Bank). Fifteen associates have already joined the ICL as of September 2018. Edition and publication of the journal Landslides, which are supported by ICL members, are the contribution of the ICL to all landslide researchers, engineers, and policy makers of the world landslide community. ICL wishes the increase the number of ICL associates which shall contribute to strengthen the basis of the ICL national network, the IPL national network, and the planned KC2020 cooperation framework.

Call for government members of ICL

Involvement of relevant governmental organizations is very important and critical for landslide disaster risk reduction. Cooperation among Governmental organizations and ICL members can boost the efforts by ICL members. Current governmental organizations and local government members of ICL are seven below. The Ministry of Home Affairs, National Institute of Disaster Management, Government of India, and the Agency for Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics of the Republic of Indonesia are new ICL members who have joined ICL in 2018. Prof. Dwikorita Karnawati, a vice president of ICL and the head of Indonesian Meteorological Agency, contributed a foreword to the Landslides (Karnawati 2018). She will be one of the coordinators of the Intergovernmental Panel for Landslide Disaster Risk Reduction planned to be organized during the WLF5.

Current governmental members of ICL as of 1 September 2018

Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey of Canada, Government of Canada

City of Zagreb, Emergency Management Office, Republic of Croatia

Ministry of Home Affairs, National Institute of Disaster Management, Government of India

Agency for Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics of the Republic of Indonesia

Public Works Department of Malaysia, Slope Engineering Branch, Federal Government of Malaysia

Ministry of Disaster Management, National Building Research Organization, Government of Sri Lanka

Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Land Development Department, Royal Thai Government

The Secretariat of ICL-Japan

138-1 Tanaka-Asukai-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606–8226, Japan

Tel: +81 (75) 723 0640, Fax: +81(75) 950 0910

E-mail: secretariat@iclhq.org

ICL WEB: <http://icl.iplhq.org/>, ICL Japanese WEB:< http://icl-jp.iplhq.org/>

IPL WEB: <http://iplhq.org/>, WLF5 WEB: <http://wlf5.iplhq.org/>