Galway, 23rd December 2025
The Cohab Initiative Secretariat is pleased to announce that the third International Conference on Health and Biodiversity, Cohab 3, will be held in Galway City, Ireland from Monday 14th to Thursday 17th September 2026. Working with our partners in UN agencies, other intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations, national focal points, and civil society groups, we will convene the conference as a key part of our five-year process of partnership development, knowledge exchange and capacity building, running from 2026 to 2030.
Overarching theme of the conference
The theme of the conference is Partnerships for People and Planet. Cohab 3 will highlight the importance of multilateral partnerships and collaboration across disciplines, sectors, borders and communities for addressing interlinked global challenges. Examples of effective partnerships for sustainable development from around the world will be highlighted in the conference sessions, including policy dialogues, real-world interventions, and research initiatives. This will include consideration of nexus approaches which place health and biodiversity at the heart of other global priorities including climate action, poverty reduction, food and nutrition security, and humanitarian assistance. Particular attention will be given to how these approaches can best secure and promote human rights and address inequalities in health outcomes and environmental risk.
The theme of partnership will form the narrative thread connecting each session, highlighting the need for international dialogues, the importance of multilateral agreements, of community-led initiatives, and “whole-of-government, whole-of-society” approaches.
Conference Objectives
The conference will promote and support partnerships for the development and delivery of integrated plans, polices and programmes on biodiversity and health at global, national and sub-national levels. This will be supported in the months before the conference by a programme of outreach, engagement and dialogues with partners and other organisations, aimed at capacity building, experience sharing and knowledge exchange.
Conference discussions will explore synergies and paths of integration between existing international policy instruments on biodiversity and health, as well as other interlinked areas such as international development, food and nutrition security, climate change, and humanitarian assistance, promoting holistic approaches at global, national and subnational levels. Key policy drivers to be considered include the Global Action Plan on Biodiversity and Health adopted at the 16th Conference of the Parties to the CBD (COP16, in Cali, Colombia, November 2024), WHO Global Pandemic Agreement (May, 2025), recommendations from the CBD SBSTTA27 meeting in Panama in October 2025, the 79th World Health Assembly in May 2026, and the CBD COP17 meeting scheduled for Yerevan, Armenia, in October 2026. Cohab 3 will also explore how the connections between health and biodiversity present opportunities to enhance synergies between the Rio Conventions (the CBD, the UNFCCC and the UNCCD), and other relevant multilateral processes.
It is intended that outputs from the conference will serve as a resource for decisions makers and other actors engaged in relevant multilateral processes on health, biodiversity, climate change and other inter-linked global priorities, and in implementing the SDGs.
Details of the conference and the registration system will be published in January 2026.