From silos to synergies

The Synergies Collaboration Platform (SCP) is an international multi-stakeholder platform for countries, initiatives and organizations to coordinate, collaborate and leverage synergetic actions in supporting the objectives of the COP28 Joint Statement on Climate, Nature and People and to enhance integrated implementation of the instruments across the three Rio Conventions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

The COP 28 Joint Statement on Climate, Nature and People was a political declaration launched in 2023 at the NDC-NBSAP Ministerial held during COP28 in Dubai. Led by the UNFCCC COP28 and CBD COP15 Presidencies and endorsed by 23 other countries (including incoming Rio Presidencies), the statement affirmed the scientific imperative to jointly implement the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in an integrated and coherent manner if the goals of either are to be successfully achieved. Signatory countries were selected in their capacity as chairs or co-chairs across 13 different country-led initiatives across climate, biodiversity, oceans, and land use.

Countries committed to taking integrated and synergistic approaches to designing and implementing their new climate, biodiversity and land-use plans and strategies under the national instruments of each Rio Convention, in particular in response to the first Global Stocktake under the UAE Consensus. These instruments include: Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), and Long-Term Strategies (LTS) for climate action; National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) for addressing biodiversity loss; and Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) targets and National Action Plans for combatting drought.

Other recent Presidency-led initiatives supporting synergistic action across the Rio Conventions include:

Rio Trio: Ahead of UNFCCC COP29 in 2024, the three Rio Conventions Presidencies of Azeri COP29, Colombian UN CBD COP16 and Saudi Arabian UNCCD COP16 Presidencies launched the Rio Trio Initiative. This collaboration aims to foster global sustainability efforts by aligning the work of the current and incoming Presidencies of the three Rio Conventions to catalyze urgent and coordinated action to achieve common goals for climate change, biodiversity conservation and land degradation.

ENACT Partnership: Launched in 2022 at UNFCCC COP27 by the governments of Egypt and Germany, the ENACT Partnership works to accelerate collective global efforts to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and land and ecosystem degradation through Nature-based Solutions (NbS). ENACT provides a hub for governments and non-state actors working on NbS to collaborate and build support across the Rio Conventions through a collective voice for evidence-based policy on NbS.

Following the political direction of the Joint Statement and recent COP decisions calling for greater synergistic action, the SCP was established to facilitate coordination, promote collaboration and mobilize greater awareness amongst a diverse yet often fragmented ecosystem of actors working across climate, biodiversity and sustainable land-use – in seeking to maximize positive synergies, identify and reduce negative trade-offs, and minimize duplication of effort amidst scarce resources.

By fostering collaboration, shared learning and identifying gaps and opportunities for alignment, it aims to turn a fragmented landscape into a more coordinated movement for collective impact. It functions as a platform that disseminates important information and relevant resources for actors across climate, biodiversity and sustainable land-use management in equal measure.

The SCP also serves as the host initiative of the ’Plan to Accelerate Solution’ (PAS) for synergistic implementation across the Rio Conventions launched at COP30. The PAS mobilized under the COP30 Action Agenda are designed as collective roadmaps of action with concrete commitments and targets to accelerate action towards the second Global Stocktake in 2028.

The Synergies Collaboration Platform (SCP) was first soft launched as the ‘Climate-Nature Coordination Platform’ at the intersessional SB60 UNFCCC meeting in Bonn, Germany in 2024. It was established to operationalize the ‘statement of intent’ published by partnership, initiative and coalition secretariats following COP28 in support of the Joint Statement on Climate, Nature and People. The platform was publicly relaunched at COP30 in Belem, Brazil as the ‘Synergies Collaboration Platform’, in recognizing the legacy of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and in affirming the importance of overcoming siloed approaches in favour of synergistic action.

The SCP is a voluntary initiative independent of the COP processes under each Rio Convention. The SCP aims to facilitate coordination, collaboration and connection between organizations, initiatives and governments to support the implementation of goals under the three Rio Convention frameworks, which may include advancing the goals of specific COP decisions, but does not participate or directly engage in the COP processes.

The Rio Convention secretariats and their Joint Liaison Group are engaged with the SCP primarily through their Joint Capacity Building Programme, which works to facilitate technical support for countries to synergistically implement their national plans and strategies, including through working with National Focal Points across the Rio Conventions.

The SCP likewise supports efforts to help harmonize and promote synergies across the Action Agendas of the Rio Conventions and other multilateral fora where relevant, including the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action, the Action Agenda for Nature and People, and the Riyadh Action Agenda.

The SCP is an open platform led by a coalition of diverse stakeholders. It takes its primary directive from the political ambition of the Joint Statement, in addition to successive COP decisions across the Rio Conventions calling for efforts to support synergistic implementation. Direction is provided by successive Rio Presidencies, in collaboration with participating countries in their chairing efforts of different initiatives and coalitions active under the SCP. Operational activities are facilitated by the SCP secretariat, hosted by Ambition Loop.

Participating entities in the SCP are invited to join the working groups or ad hoc coordination groups, led by nominated coordinators responsible for advancing substantive activities under each group – with support by the SCP secretariat when required.

The secretariat of the SCP provides the institutional capacity for ongoing and consistent exchange among participating actors to the SCP. Led by principles of radical collaboration, open experimentation, and agile responsiveness, the SCP secretariat provides two key functions: maintaining up-to-date tracking and visibility of synergies-relevant activities among global communities of practice – connecting and proposing alignment where relevant, or proposing new collaborations; and supporting ongoing coordination and and execution of collective activities under the working groups or ad hoc coordination groups.

The secretariat of the SCP is hosted by Ambition Loop, a Chile-based non-governmental organized founded by the former Climate High-Level Champions of COP25 and COP26 which aims to incubate and promote ‘ambition loops’ to drive positive cycles of implementation through connecting multilateral processes with real economy mobilization.

If you are a government, intergovernmental organization, non-governmental organization and/or multistakeholder coalition or initiative interested in participating in the activities of the SCP, please contact synergiesplatform@ambitionloop.earth.