Local and subnational journey at COP17
Opportunities for local and subnational governments to engage at COP17
subnational & local authorities hub
- 20 - 30 Oct 2026
- Blue Zone, exact venue TBC
Side event 7252
Blue Yerevan: Rethinking Urban Water Heritage
- 21 Oct 2026
- 15:00
- Blue Zone, Spitak - Side-event Room 2
More info
Within the framework of COP17, the Cultural and Social Narratives Laboratory (CSN Lab) presents one of its long-term environmental research initiatives, Blue Yerevan, to explore the intersections of biodiversity, urban freshwater ecosystems, culture, and community life.
Blue Yerevan is a long-term cross-disciplinary research project that investigates the transformation of Yerevan’s rivers, lakes, springs, reservoirs, fountains, and other urban water bodies, examining their ecological role alongside their cultural, social, and historical significance. Situated at the intersection of environmental research, urban studies, environmental anthropology, and memory studies, the project combines archival research, fieldwork, oral histories, mapping, artistic practices, and community engagement to understand urban blue spaces as both ecological systems and cultural landscapes. It explores how freshwater ecosystems contribute not only to biodiversity, ecosystem resilience, and climate adaptation, but also to collective memory, everyday practices, local identities, and public life. By reconnecting ecological knowledge with cultural narratives, Blue Yerevan proposes an interdisciplinary framework for understanding, protecting, and restoring urban blue spaces.
From vision to impact
Delivering biodiversity results through subnational leadership and whole-of-society partnerships
Multi-stakeholder Auditorium
- 22 Oct 2026
- 09:00 - 11:35
- Blue Zone, exact venue TBC
More info
A high-level event opening Local and Subnational Governments Day at CBD COP17, bringing together subnational governments, national governments, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, civil society, academia, donors, and international partners to showcase how biodiversity outcomes are being delivered through territorial leadership and whole-of-government and whole-of-society partnerships.
As implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) takes centre stage at COP17, the event will highlight how subnational governments are already delivering measurable results through conservation, restoration, and ecological connectivity, while demonstrating the partnerships that make these outcomes possible.
Objective
- Showcase successful subnational biodiversity initiatives delivering measurable results.
- Highlight the partnerships that enable effective implementation of the KMGBF.
- Inspire replication and scaling of place-based solutions across regions.
- Position subnational governments as essential partners in delivering global biodiversity goals.
Planetary stewardship in action
Local solutions for the Rio Conventions through transformative leadership
Multi-stakeholder Auditorium
- 22 Oct 2026
- 14:00 - 18:00
- Blue Zone, exact venue TBC
More info
This session will explore what leadership and stewardship mean in today’s rapidly changing world, and how cities and subnational governments are delivering coordinated action that responds to interconnected environmental, social and economic challenges.
Through practical examples, speakers will demonstrate how urban nature, climate resilience, sustainable land and natural resource management, and inclusive governance can be advanced together to deliver multiple environmental, social, and economic benefits.
The discussion will highlight innovative policies, planning approaches and partnerships that embrace systems integration, strengthen connectivity between local, subnational and national governments, and build resilience through transformative leadership and integrated planetary stewardship. It will also explore how emerging opportunities—including innovation and artificial intelligence—can potentially support more adaptive governance while recognising that change is constant. Finally, the session will consider what success looks like in an interconnected world, and how collaborative leadership can strengthen trust between governments, communities and nature while accelerating progress towards shared global goals.
Side event 7751
Connecting Climate, Biodiversity and Land: Synergies among the Rio Conventions
- 22 Oct 2026
- 15:00
- Blue Zone, Spitak - Side-event Room 2
More info
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.
9th Summit for Subnational Governments and Cities
More info
The role of cities in taking action for nature has never been more widely recognised or important. For the planet to prosper, cities and regions need to thrive, and without a nature-positive trajectory, this is not possible. This is what makes the 9th Summit for Subnational Governments and Cities such a critical platform for strengthening subnational government collaboration, scaling implementation, leveraging finance, and accelerating multilevel action for nature.
Side event 7603
Subnational governments and civil society organizations living in peace with nature: a global pathway to prosperity
- 26 Oct 2026
- 18:15
- Blue Zone, Lastiver - Youth Group meeting room
More info
Nature loss, water stress, and climate impacts are increasingly affecting people’s health, safety, livelihoods, and economic prospects across the world. Living in peace with nature is therefore not only an environmental imperative, but also a condition for long-term prosperity, resilience, and social stability. Healthy ecosystems underpin water security, climate adaptation and mitigation, food systems, livelihoods, competitiveness, and public health worldwide. Among others, wetlands, rivers, forests, soils, coastal ecosystems and urban green spaces help retain water, reduce flood and drought risks, support biodiversity, and sustain the natural assets on which economies depend. Delivering these benefits at scale requires stronger cooperation between public authorities, civil society, indigenous peoples and local communities, youth, the private sector and national and international institutions, while also recognising that cities and regions as well as civil society organisations are key actors in supporting and shaping investment, infrastructure and implementation on the ground.
Side event 7531
From Global Goals to National Law: UK Approaches to Delivering Biodiversity Targets
- 27 Oct 2026
- 11:30
- Blue Zone, Talin - Side-event Room 1
More info
Translation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework targets into domestic legislation is a vital step towards ensuring their delivery. This event will explore experiences of countries that have already begun this this translation, in order to turn global goals to national law.
Across the UK, governments have taken progressive steps towards setting environment targets into law, bringing much-needed legal backing to the UK’s global commitments under the CBD. This event will explore the steps that have been taken in England, Scotland and Wales to establish legally binding targets frameworks, each at different stages of maturity, explore the lessons learned, and ask what’s needed next. It will involve experts from UK governments, parliamentarians, and civil society, who will provide valuable insights for other countries looking to ground the KMGBF targets in legislation to drive action. The event will be of direct relevance to the COP17 item on ‘engagement with subnational governments, cities and other local authorities to enhance the implementation of the KMGBF’.
Side event 7805
TIE3 Rio Synergies Roadmap: Landscape Restoration and Connectivity as a Delivery Mechanisms
- 28 Oct 2026
- 15:00
- Blue Zone, Spitak - Side-event Room 2
More info
Achieving the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) requires working at multiple spatial scales, governance levels, and across sectors, connecting ecosystems as well as stakeholders. Integrated landscape approaches are critical tools leading to improved conservation, sustainable use, and restoration of ecosystems (Goals A and B of the KMGBF). These approaches are fully consistent with the ecosystem approach that CBD is fostering, and with SBSTTA discussions on landscape approaches. They recognize the interlinkages and interdependence of ecosystems and how they provide key ecosystem services for socio-economic systems. Landscapes and seascapes sit at the intersection of competing and complementary objectives: biodiversity conservation, climate mitigation and adaptation, land degradation neutrality, food and water security, and sustainable livelihoods. Landscape approaches such as forest and landscape restoration and conservation of socio-ecological corridors generate co-benefits that directly advance the objectives of all three Rio Conventions simultaneously and generate sustainable livelihoods for local populations and Indigenous Peoples. Restoration and reconnecting natural systems can recover ecosystems and species populations (CBD), rehabilitate degraded land and combat desertification (UNCCD), and sequester carbon and build climate resilience (UNFCCC) as part of the TIE3 Rio Synergies Roadmap.
Local and subnational hub
- 20 - 30 Oct 2026
- Blue Zone, exact venue TBC
See program for 23 Oct
Regions4 day
Insert time
Local solutions creating synergies across the Rio Conventions
This session will explore what leadership and stewardship mean in today’s rapidly changing world, and how cities and subnational governments are delivering coordinated action that responds to interconnected environmental, social and economic challenges.
Hub closed 24 Oct for 9th Summit for Subnational Governments and Cities
Local and subnational hub closed on 24 October 2026 for 9th Summit for Subnational Governments and Cities
See program for 25 Oct
ICLEI day
Insert time
Local solutions creating synergies across the Rio Conventions
This session will explore what leadership and stewardship mean in today’s rapidly changing world, and how cities and subnational governments are delivering coordinated action that responds to interconnected environmental, social and economic challenges.
See program for 26 Oct
Quebec day
Insert time
Local solutions creating synergies across the Rio Conventions
This session will explore what leadership and stewardship mean in today’s rapidly changing world, and how cities and subnational governments are delivering coordinated action that responds to interconnected environmental, social and economic challenges.