Organised by: UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Amazônia Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) and China Jiliang University (CJLU)
Supported by: Huzhou City, China
The interconnections between forests, food systems, biodiversity and finance play a key role in global environmental governance. Building on the first Brazil–China Researchers' Symposium on Forests and Nature, held in Brasília in 2025, this second edition deepens the bilateral dialogue and broadens it across the full arc from science to policy to implementation: generating joint evidence, translating that evidence into policy options, and exchanging concrete implementation experience from China and Brazil. Forests are treated not only as ecosystems to protect, but as strategic assets for climate resilience, food security, biodiversity conservation, restoration and sustainable development.
The Symposium is organized around three interconnected axes, which structure the two-day programme:
- Axis 1 – Science: food security, land use, sustainable agriculture and forest protection: deforestation dynamics, land-use change and climate impacts on food systems, and on how the demand side of agricultural trade between Brazil and China can be aligned with forest protection.
- Axis 2 – Finance: green finance, investment and ecological compensation mechanisms: instruments for mobilizing capital for forests and nature, i.e. carbon markets, Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), green insurance, ecological compensation and new investment platforms that directly addressing the biodiversity finance gap.
- Axis 3 – Policy and implementation: nature-based solutions and multilateral policy coordination: implementation experiences from both countries, China's institutionalized ecological-civilization policies and Brazil's experience embedding forests and climate in national and diplomatic agendas — and how these can inform coordinated action across the Global South.
The 2026 edition takes place in a uniquely favorable window. Held in September, it sits between the two decisions that will shape the next decade of nature governance: CBD COP17 (Yerevan, Armenia, 19–30 October 2026), which delivers the first global review of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework with resource mobilization and the biodiversity finance gap at its centre; and UNFCCC COP31 (Antalya, Türkiye, 9–20 November 2026). The Symposium is therefore positioned as a bilateral science–policy–implementation input feeding directly into both processes, with each stream generating concrete messages for the negotiations.
For more information, contact katrina.borromeo@un.org or felipe.guntin@un.org
