Conference events

Every three years, representatives of the governments of each of the Contracting Parties meet as the Conference of the Contracting Parties (COP), to agree on a work programme and budgetary arrangements for the next triennium and consider guidance on a range of ongoing and emerging environmental issues.

Representatives of non-member states, intergovernmental institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also participate in these meetings as non-voting observers.

Each meeting of the COP includes a number of technical sessions on ongoing and emerging wetland conservation and wise use issues, to update Convention concepts and draft guidance for the Parties.

The sixty-second sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SB 62) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will take place at the World Conference Center Bonn (WCCB) in Bonn, Germany, from 16 to 26 June 2025.

Taking place 19-21 February 2025 in Cape Town, Africa’s Green Economy Summit (AGES) will connect high-impact climate and other sustainable development projects across Africa with global capital. This year’s theme, “Building a climate resilient Africa: Catalyzing investment and innovation in the green and blue economies,” will focus on the five sub-themes: green reforms, nature and biodiversity, climate finance, the future of African cities, and green industrialization.

CPI’s Barbara Buchner will deliver a keynote speech during the summit’s opening plenary session. CPI’s Senior Advisor Jonathan First, who is the interim chairperson of AGES’ advisory board, will also feature as a speaker at the summit.

This year, Brazil will host the COP30 climate conference in the heart of the Amazon rainforest – putting the spotlight on one of the world’s most important tropical environments, a huge biodiversity hotspots and globally important carbon sink.

But forests are increasingly under threat, both from deforestation and from the climate crisis itself. The Amazon forest might be close to its tipping point. What do we need to do in the next decade to save the forests before it’s too late?

On the pathway from Baku to Belém, join a thousand experts, practitioners, policymakers and grassroots leaders from around the world to lay the foundations for a resilient, productive and just future for forests.

Economist Impact, with the support of official host The Nippon Foundation, is hosting the 12th World Ocean Summit in Tokyo in 2025.  With over 14,000 islands, 347,000km of coastline and a blue economy that is forecasted to reach 28 trillion yen by 2030, Japan as a maritime nation offers a rich cultural and historical perspective.

The summit convenes the widest cross-section of the ocean community from business and finance to government, national and international policy-makers, civil society and academia. It is designed to instigate action to develop the sustainable ocean economy; to encourage new partnerships across industries, with NGOs, scientists, technology developers and investors. By bringing together all stakeholders in the ocean ecosystem, the summit provides the perfect platform to inspire new synergies, solutions and strategies on the track to meet the 2030 targets in UN SDG 14.

The 12th annual summit will focus on the transition to a sustainable ocean economy,  ocean stewardship, strategies to restore ocean health, advancements in marine technology and collaborative efforts to address ocean pollution. The agenda will include a series of “How to” workshops designed to generate tangible action points and key takeaways to enable organisations to instigate change and make an impact on the journey towards a healthier ocean.

The summit in Tokyo will continue action-based conversations on the key themes from recent World Ocean Summits, as well as provide a vital opportunity for participants from Asia to engage with the global ocean community ahead of the United Nations Oceans Conference in June 2025.

Simultaneous translation will be available during the event from English to Japanese.

The world is off track. According to the latest progress report on sustainable development goals, of the 169 targets, only 14% are on track, while 20% are not even tracked. Disturbingly, 14% show regression, including critical areas like hunger, education, employment, and the environment. The first global stocktake highlights the urgency, showing that to meet temperature targets, emissions must drop by 43% by 2030, but current national commitments only achieve a 2% cut—pointing to gaps in both action and data.

Acceleration on sustainable development and climate solutions is clearly needed, for which partnerships are key. The upcoming edition of the World Sustainable Development Summit (WSDS) will be held under the theme ‘Partnerships for Accelerating Sustainable Development and Climate Solutions’ from 5th to 7th March 2025.

The Mass Timber Conference attracts professionals from across the forest, manufacturing, design, development, and construction industries.

The International Mass Timber Conference — in its ninth year for 2025 — is the largest gathering of CLT and mass timber experts in the world and focuses on the entire supply chain for mass timber.

The Nature Hub in 2025 will promote a 3-day event with the main objectives of:

• Providing a platform to elevate voices for nature
• Showcasing the economic potential of investing in nature
• Building momentum for governments and corporations to deliver for nature and climate
• Building momentum towards COP30

More information will be published soon.

Under the theme ‘Peace with Nature’, COP16 is the first meeting of the COP after the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) in 2022.

IUCN will closely follow the negotiations, providing scientifically-sound inputs for the implementation of the Framework, and for monitoring progress towards meeting the global goals and targets, putting forward its knowledge products, tools and the wealth of experience vested in the Union.

IUCN will also host a pavilion in the Blue Zone of the COP venue. Under the banner Unite for Nature, Home of Union, the IUCN pavilion will showcase a variety of events throughout the two weeks of COP. All IUCN Members and partners are welcome to join!

COP 16 will be the first Biodiversity COP since the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework at COP 15 in December 2022 in Montreal, Canada.

At COP 16, governments will be tasked with reviewing the state of implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Parties to the Convention are expected to show the alignment of their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) with the Framework. COP 16 will further develop the monitoring framework and advance resource mobilization for the Global Biodiversity Framework. Among other tasks, COP 16 is also due to finalize and operationalize the multilateral mechanism on the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of digital sequence information on genetic resources.