At the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (the UN Conference on Environment and Development) in Rio de Janeiro, climate change, biodiversity loss, and desertification and land degradation were identified as three interlinked environmental crises requiring coordinated international action. This led to the creation of the three “Rio Conventions”: the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Despite the clear scientific, social, and technical connections between these crises, the three processes have largely advanced in parallel – at different speeds, with different levels of political and media attention, and with limited structural coordination. 

In recent years, momentum has been building to ‘break the silos’ between the conventions. The three Rio Convention secretariats issued a joint statement on synergies at UNFCCC COP30 in Belém in November 2025, and a dedicated Rio Synergies platform has since been launched to showcase joint action on sustainable land use, nature-positive food systems, and the renewable energy transition.  

Recent assessments by IPBES, including the Nexus Assessment and the UPBES-IPCC report on biodiversity and climate change, have further reinforced the need for integrated responses to interconnected environmental challenges. These assessments highlight the importance of approaches that can simultaneously address biodiversity loss, climate change, and land degradation. In this context, Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have increasingly emerged as a practical implementation pathway that contributes to the objectives of all three Rio Conventions, helping translate global commitments into integrated action across sectors and governance levels.  

CBD COP17 – which will mark the first review of progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – offers a timely opportunity to bring this conversation to the EU research and policy community. The discussion may also inform agenda item 13 on cooperation with international organizations and bodies established under the Conventions.  In parallel, new institutional mechanisms such as the CBD Technical and Scientific Support Centres (TSSCs) are emerging to strengthen technical and scientific cooperation, support capacity building, and facilitate the regional uptake and implementation of the objectives of the Rio Conventions. These experiences can provide valuable insights into how science-policy interfaces can better support implementation beyond the global level. 

This side event brings together three EU-funded Horizon Europe projects working on complementary aspects of this challenge – COOP4CBD, RESPIN and NetworkNature – together with partner institutions CREAF, FRB, UNEP-WCMC, and ICLEI to share early lessons and discuss what stronger synergies between the Rio Conventions could look like in practice, from both an EU coordination perspective and a science-policy interface perspective. Particular attention will be given to how these science-policy interfaces can better support implementation at regional, national and subnational levels, where global commitments are translated into concrete action. 

Format of the event: 

1. Short presentation of the products of the projects (15 min) 

2. Round table: 

• Government representative 

• Representatives of the projects (RESPIN, COOP4CBD, NetworkNature/Nature-based Solutions community)) 

• Policy makers 

• Scientists 

Key questions to address: 

• What concrete opportunities exist to strengthen synergies among the Rio Conventions at national and international levels? 

• How can EU-funded research better support integrated implementation across the three conventions? 

• What role can science-policy interfaces play in overcoming institutional and governance silos? 

• What are we not achieving by treating climate, biodiversity, and desertification as independent topics? 

• What role can NbS and other integrated approaches play in advancing synergies among the Rio Conventions?