The Rio Conventions

Credit: un.org

New! At UNFCCC COP 28, the Rio Conventions Pavilion Journey will take place as a series of events across the various meetings at the conference. Sessions of the Rio Conventions Pavilion Journey will be held between 30 November and 12 December 2023 inside the United Arab Emirates (UAE)’s Expo City Dubai.

Climate change, desertification and biodiversity loss are heavily interlinked and pose existential challenges to humanity. Governments came together to discuss and address such existential challenges at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

It was at this Summit where the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, also known as UN Climate Change) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, also known as UN Biodiversity) were opened for signature, while the negotiation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was called for in the Summit outcome - Agenda 21. This is why these three sister conventions later collectively became known as "the Rio Conventions".

The three Rio Conventions are the result of concerns over similar environmental and development issues and have sustainable development at their hearts.

The Rio Conventions work closely together, with the overlaps in their work becoming ever stronger as the challenges related to climate change, desertification and biodiversity loss grow and cross-cutting solutions are developed.

Key definitions

Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns that in the long run risk completely altering the ecosystems that support life on Earth.
Biodiversity covers the totality of the world’s animals, plants and ecosystems.
Desertification refers both to the literal expansion of deserts and the gradual decline in quality of soil, vegetation, water resources or wildlife.

What is a UN Convention?

A UN Convention is a binding agreement between different countries. Under such Conventions, nations adopt key goals at annual Conferences of the Parties (COPs) and report periodically on progress in implementing these goals. Each Rio Convention has a supporting secretariat. A key task of the secretariats is to organize annual COPs which are attended by national delegations and numerous participants of observer organizations, including from business and civil society. Other key tasks are to help governments report data and to organize technical workshops.

Coordinated solutions

Given that land and marine ecosystems absorb more than half of man-made carbon emissions, it is clear that protecting these systems need to be a central component of climate action. At the same time, healthy biodiversity and healthy soils play a huge role in building resilience to the unavoidable impacts of climate change.

The biggest overlap in the work of all three Rio Conventions is in the field of “nature-based solutions”. Such solutions refer for example to the protection of coral reefs and mangrove forests that protect coastal communities from storms, flooding and erosion. Measures to avoid cutting down huge swaths of tropical forests are beneficial both for animal and plant life and are crucial for a stable climate, food and drinking water.

Land degradation is not only extremely harmful for biodiversity, but accounts for around 60% of global methane emissions. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that is released through various unsustainable agriculture practices, including meat production. Sustainable agriculture and land use is also a shared area of work of all three Conventions as is recognized in the Koronivia joint work on agriculture.

Another key overlap includes the recognition that societies need to rapidly introduce and scale up the use of clean and sustainable technologies. This applies notably to renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar power. These are key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions whilst diminishing pressure on land and forest biodiversity by providing alternatives to unsustainable and polluting biomass fuels (e.g. charcoal used for cooking).

The Rio Conventions and sustainable development

Each Convention contributes to the goals of Agenda 21 adopted by governments in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. Agenda 21 has the central objective goal of achieving global sustainable development in the 21^st century, with sustainability defined by the 1987 United Nations Brundtland Commission as "fulfilling the needs of current generations without compromising the needs of future generations, while ensuring a balance between economic growth, environmental care and social well-being."

How the Rio Conventions formally work together

Numerous articles and decisions agreed and taken at the annual COPs of each Convention highlight the need for increased collaboration between them, in order to improve synergies and reduce the duplication of activities.

In August 2001, the Conventions established a Joint Liaison Group as an informal forum for exchanging information, exploring opportunities for synergistic activities and increasing coordination.

Options for collaboration have been explored in several meetings and documents, and a number of collaborative activities are already underway.

Such activities are for example the joint coordination of the work of scientists working on key reports relating to climate change, biodiversity and desertification, along with joint workshops on overlapping issues such as preventing deforestation and restoring drylands.

Finally, a Rio Conventions Pavilion installed at major international meetings also plays an important role in convening discussions aimed to build coordinated approaches and partnerships towards these interrelated goals of the Rio Conventions.