The BESPIN Regional Trialogue for Europe and Central Asia (the Trialogue) was held in Skopje, North Macedonia, from 19 to 21 May 2026, bringing together policymakers, scientists and practitioners from 12 participating countries: Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Slovenia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Co-organized by the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Network (BES‑Net), the REinforcing Science‑Policy INterfaces for integrated biodiversity and climate knowledge and policies (RESPIN) project funded by the European Union (EU), the Europe and Central Asia Network of organisations engaging in IPBES (ECA Network) and the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning of North Macedonia, the Trialogue provided a space to examine how convergent biodiversity and climate knowledge from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Transformative Change and Nexus Assessments and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) can be translated into policy-relevant action. The discussions focused on identifying institutional, governance, knowledge and implementation barriers and on exploring practical pathways for more coordinated uptake across sectors and governance levels and scales.
Across the discussions, participants repeatedly pointed to a shared implementation challenge: on one hand, relevant evidence, experience and policy commitments exist; on the other hand, governance arrangements, finance mechanisms, communication channels and knowledge systems often remain fragmented.
The context across participating countries is highly diverse, extending from Mediterranean and Balkan forests, wetlands, grasslands and karst systems to the Caucasus, mountain landscapes, the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea Basin. Yet the action logic emerging from the Trialogue was broadly shared. Climate change and biodiversity loss are mutually reinforcing: water, land, food, health, livelihoods and equity are interlinked, and effective responses often depend on the ability to work across sectors, governance levels, knowledge systems and borders.
This Action Document is framed as a practical bridge from dialogue to follow-up. It captures six anticipated regional action pathways and 12 country-specific priorities and actions developed through participant discussions. While the proposed actions do not add new commitments beyond existing national ones, they are participant-generated proposals and entry points that may inform continued dialogue, national follow-up, regional cooperation, peer learning and future resource mobilization.
The regional action pathways are also intended to contextualize key messages from the IPBES Nexus Assessment, the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment and IPCC AR6 assessments for the Europe and Central Asia context. The pathways use the assessments’ key messages as an analytical lens to identify where integrated responses may reduce trade-offs, where enabling conditions are needed, and where biodiversity-climate knowledge can be translated into practical institutional, financial and management arrangements.
