The Rio Conventions
Going back in time, at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, countries around the world agreed on three different global environment treaties that address climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation, together known as the Rio Conventions. These three conventions are the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) [2]. The three treaties meet separately with their own Conference of Parties (COP), fund separately, and report separately [2]. In 2026, between Ulaanbaatar in August, Yerevan in October, and Antalya in November, the three treaties that came out of Rio will each hold a conference, on three continents, ten days apart at the closest point.
In August 2001, a Joint Liaison Group (JLG) between the three Rio Conventions was established as an informal forum for exchanging information, exploring opportunities for synergistic activities and increasing coordination [3]. However, it is worth noting that the JLG is not an implementation entity [4]. At the Bonn meeting in 2025, the Executive Secretaries “pledged to strengthen cooperation to address the triple planetary crisis” and set three priority pillars for 2025–2026: country support for integrated planning and capacity building; coherence and complementarity on shared themes; and outreach and visibility through unified messaging at global events [5, 6]. The secretaries stated on their website that they are “developing a joint work plan focused on priority areas with high potential for synergy,” which “could support a potential joint work programme of the Rio Conventions” [7]. Will the joint work plan become a joint work programme with parties’ endorsement, or will it remain a product of the secretariat? We will have to see.
Where separation costs something: the fire
In 2025, the EU recorded its worst wildfire season since records began, with more than a million hectares burned, of which two fifths inside protected Natura 2000 sites [8]. Fire doesn’t belong to any of the three conventions, but it shows up in all three of their ledgers.
Under the UNFCCC, emissions from wildfires are counted as emissions from land use and forestry, whereas the EU LULUCF Regulation lets Member States leave emissions caused by extreme fire out of their accounts as a “natural disturbance” [9]. However, science has a different way to say it. Scientists have pointed out that abandoned, ungrazed farmland is a major source of fires, rather than ‘natural,’ and they have named the institutional problem as “fragmented mandates across land management, civil protection, and municipal planning can create principal-agent problems” [10, 11].
Under the UNCCD, it is degraded land. Under the CBD, it is an ecosystem awaiting restoration. No single body sees the whole hillside. The separation of the three treaties leaves prevention, the cheapest part of the problem, unattended and without an institutional owner. The UNEP’s Spreading like Wildfire estimates that planning receives less than one per cent of wildfire spending, while emergency response takes more than half [12].
Synergy from Belém to Antalya
Antalya inherits two very different starting points for synergy. The first belongs to the Türkiye Presidency, which has made Rio Synergy one of its ten priority themes [1]. Its plan is practical: integrated wildfire and restoration pilots in the Mediterranean, designed to be replicated in Africa and the Pacific [1]. Its most ambitious line calls for “shared implementation and reporting models” across all three conventions [1].
The second starting point is the formal negotiations, led at COP31 by Australia, and there the record is thin.
- COP30: Talks on cooperation with other international organisations were deferred to June 2026, with the EU, Colombia, Paraguay, and Switzerland pushing for substantive discussion, and the Arab Group asking for more submissions first [13].
- SB64: Governments could not agree on conclusions or even a timeline, and their draft text will not be carried forward. Several objected to the word “synergies” itself, and many worried about “duplicative processes and increased burdens” [14].
The CBD has concrete text on the table. SBSTTA-27’s recommendation on biodiversity and climate change asks the CBD to invite the UNFCCC and UNCCD Executive Secretaries “to collaborate on strengthening the role and function of the JLG” [15]. It also asks for “a multilevel road map with short, medium and long-term actions” on policy coherence to be reported to COP17 in Yerevan this October [15].
On the UNCCD front, at its COP17 hosted in Ulaanbaatar this August, synergies were never discussed. The US objected to the inclusion of Item 4, “Promotion and strengthening of relationships with other relevant conventions,” on the agenda [16]. It was pushed to COP18, as were the items on gender and civil society participation [16]. The workaround was instead built on the sidelines. A high-level dialogue, convened by the Presidencies of UNCCD COP17, incoming CBD COP17 and incoming UNFCCC COP31 proposed a voluntary, country-led group: the Rio Synergies Group for Action under the COP31 Türkiye Presidency Action Agenda [17]. Supporters include Australia, Ireland, Japan, the Maldives, and Sierra Leone [17].
The COP31 Türkiye Presidency may have high ambitions of placing synergy on their priority action areas, but the negotiations do not share the same enthusiasm. As COP31 opens in Antalya, we ask what it would take to run the Rio Conventions together, and what would count as more than another declaration.
