iied.org

IIED (the International Institute for Environment and Development) is an independent research organisation that works to deliver positive change on a global scale. It focuses its research, partnerships and influence on three connected problems — climate change, nature loss and inequality — and on the unfair systems that drive them. If you are trying to understand what the institute actually does before citing it, partnering with it, or following its events, the short answer is: it is a policy-oriented research body, not a grantmaker or a front-line service provider, and its output is organised around six stated priorities.

How IIED describes its own role

The homepage frames the organisation in three parts: what it does, how it works, and its impact. The "how it works" element matters for anyone assessing its outputs — IIED presents itself as combining research, partnerships and influence, which means its publications are typically aimed at changing policy and practice rather than only describing problems.

The six priorities

IIED groups its work under six priorities, each phrased as a change it wants to see:

These six areas are the most reliable way to predict what a given IIED article, toolkit or event will be about. A piece on subsidy reform, for example, sits under trade and finance; a piece on tenure rights sits where nature governance and climate meet.

What the work looks like in practice

The site's current activity shows the mix of formats IIED uses:

• Events and conference participation. IIED publishes event listings for major negotiations, including where to find IIED and partners at COP31 and at the 17th UN biodiversity conference (CBD COP17), held 19–30 October in Yerevan, Armenia. At COP17, IIED states it is pushing to turn pledges into practical, equitable action supporting the priorities of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
• Toolkits and practical guidance. A new IIED toolkit supports Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) with climate reporting.
• Research-based articles and insight pieces. Examples include work on making subsidy reform work for nature, climate and people, and analysis of locally led finance for nature that estimates finance flows to local actors conserving and restoring nature.
• Themed spotlights. "Cities as places of justice" is a current spotlight tied to Urban October, covering how people in urban spaces prepare for and respond to climate change, challenges to unfair housing systems, and evidence to improve support for migrants and refugees in cities. Related items include a piece on transforming informal settlements on a warming planet and an event on housing justice and forced evictions.

When IIED is the right source — and when it isn't

Use IIED if you need policy-relevant research and convening on climate, nature, cities, food systems or finance, especially where the framing centres community-led approaches and equity. Its conference listings are also a practical way to track where its researchers will be speaking.

It is a weaker fit if you need raw datasets, country-level legal advice, or individual case assistance — nothing on the homepage indicates those services. The site does reference subscribing, but no pricing or access terms are stated there, so check the relevant page directly rather than assuming content is unrestricted.

A quick way to navigate the site

Start from "What we're working to change" to identify which of the six priorities matches your topic, then move to the spotlight or news items under it. For time-sensitive material — COP31, COP17, the housing justice event on 29 October 2026 — use the event listings, since dates and locations are stated explicitly there.

IIED (the International Institute for Environment and Development) is an independent research organisation that describes its mission as delivering positive change on a global scale. Its work is organised around six stated priorities, which the institute says focus its research, partnerships and influence on tackling climate change, nature loss and inequality — and on the unfair systems that drive them. The six areas below are drawn from IIED's own description of "what we do."

The Six Priorities at a Glance

How the Priorities Connect

The six areas are not isolated programmes. IIED frames them as interlocking responses to three overlapping problems: climate change, nature loss and inequality. Several priorities explicitly pair social and environmental goals — for example, trade and investment are addressed in terms of benefiting both people and planet, and cities are framed around justice rather than infrastructure alone.

Climate and nature

Two priorities sit closest to the environmental core: transforming climate action and governance, and championing community-led nature governance and stewardship. IIED's current spotlight work illustrates this in practice. It highlights its asks at the UN biodiversity summit (CBD COP17, held 19–30 October in Yerevan, Armenia), where it says it is pushing to turn pledges into practical, equitable action supporting the priorities of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Related recent outputs include work on locally led finance for nature and on making subsidy reform work for nature, climate and people.

Cities, housing and justice

The cities priority is currently presented under the banner "Cities as places of justice." IIED says it is supporting people in urban spaces to prepare for and respond to climate change, challenging unfair and unsustainable housing systems, and generating evidence to improve support for migrants and refugees in cities. Concrete examples include an event on housing justice and forced evictions (listed for 29 October 2026) and an insight piece on forced evictions and climate change.

Trade, finance and migration

The remaining priorities address the economic and human systems behind inequality. Shifting trade, finance and investment is treated as a lever for both people and planet, while the migration priority focuses on brighter futures for migrants and displaced people — a theme that also appears in the cities work on refugees in urban areas.

Where to Follow Specific Priorities

If you want to track one area rather than the whole portfolio, IIED's site organises content by these themes, with news, insight articles, events and toolkits attached to each. For example, a recent news item describes a new IIED toolkit supporting Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States with climate reporting, and event listings point to where IIED and partners appear at COP31. The site also signals a subscription option for updates; access terms beyond that are not specified in the available material.

Choosing What Matters for Your Purpose

• If you follow international negotiations, start with the climate governance and biodiversity priorities, where IIED publishes its COP asks and event listings.
• If you work on urban policy or housing, the cities-as-justice priority is the most directly relevant, including its forced eviction and informal settlement work.
• If your interest is finance or markets, the trade, finance and investment priority covers subsidy reform and locally led finance for nature.
• If you represent a community or local organisation, the community-led nature governance priority and the locally led finance strand are the closest fit.

Each priority page on iied.org is the practical entry point for publications, events and toolkits tied to that theme.

IIED is using CBD COP17 to push for pledges to be turned into practical, equitable action that supports the priorities of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. The 17th UN biodiversity conference runs from 19–30 October in Yerevan, Armenia, and IIED and its partners are attending the meeting. That is the core of IIED's stated position at the summit: implementation and equity, not new promises.

What IIED has said about its COP17 aims

IIED frames COP17 as "a pivotal moment for global action to reverse biodiversity loss." Its stated ask is to move from commitments to delivery in a way that is practical and fair, with the priorities of Indigenous Peoples and local communities treated as central rather than peripheral.

The organisation's wider biodiversity work points in the same direction. Its six priorities include championing community-led nature governance and stewardship, and promoting forest, farm and fisheries systems that feed and nourish people and planet. At COP17, those priorities translate into an emphasis on who makes decisions about nature and who benefits from protecting it.

Where to find IIED and its partners at COP17

IIED has published an event listing for COP17 showing where it and its partners can be found during the conference. If you are attending or following the summit remotely, that listing is the practical entry point for sessions involving IIED.

The summit sits alongside other IIED work on the same themes. Recent items on the site include:

• Locally led finance for nature — estimating finance flows to local actors for conserving and restoring nature (12 October 2026)
• Making subsidy reform work for nature, climate and people — an article (14 October 2026)
• Women's tenure rights for gender-responsive coherence across the Rio Conventions — an insight by Karen Wong Pérez and Omaira Bolaños (14 October 2026)

Together these indicate the kind of practical, equity-focused action IIED is arguing for at COP17: finance that reaches local actors, subsidy reform that works for nature and people, and tenure rights that connect the biodiversity, climate and desertification conventions.

How this fits IIED's broader role

IIED describes itself as an independent research organisation that delivers positive change on a global scale. Its work is organised around six priorities: helping migrants and displaced people; shifting trade, finance and investment to benefit people and planet; evolving cities as places of inspiration and justice; promoting forest, farm and fisheries systems; transforming climate action and governance; and championing community-led nature governance.

Its COP17 position follows from that structure. The summit is treated as a test of whether global pledges become equitable action on the ground, with Indigenous Peoples and local communities at the centre of both the decisions and the benefits.

What to watch for

If you want to track whether IIED's ask is being met, the useful signals are the same ones its work highlights: whether finance flows to local actors, whether subsidy reform advances, and whether tenure rights are reflected in how the Rio Conventions are implemented together. IIED's COP17 event listing is the place to follow its sessions and partner events during the conference.

IIED publishes dedicated event listings for both the UN climate conference (COP31) and the UN biodiversity conference (CBD COP17), so the most direct way to locate the institute and its partners at either meeting is to check those listings on iied.org. The COP17 listing covers the 17th UN biodiversity conference, running 19–30 October in Yerevan, Armenia; the COP31 listing covers the climate conference beginning 9 November 2026. Both pages are described as event listings rather than full agendas, so they are best used as a starting point for finding sessions, then confirmed against the official conference programmes.

What the COP17 listing covers

IIED frames CBD COP17 as a pivotal moment for reversing biodiversity loss and states that it and its partners are attending in Yerevan to push for turning pledges into practical, equitable action that supports the priorities of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. The event listing is the page to use for finding where IIED and partners appear during the 19–30 October window.

Related work published around the summit gives a sense of the themes IIED is bringing to it:

• Locally led finance for nature — an event and accompanying work on estimating finance flows to local actors for conserving and restoring nature (12 October 2026).
• Subsidy reform — an article on making subsidy reform work for nature, climate and people (14 October 2026).
• Gender and tenure — an insight by Karen Wong Pérez and Omaira Bolaños on women's tenure rights for gender-responsive coherence across the Rio Conventions (14 October 2026).

If you are attending COP17 and want to hear IIED or its partners speak, start with the listing and match its entries against the official CBD programme; the listing itself does not appear to publish a complete session-by-session schedule.

What the COP31 listing covers

The COP31 listing is dated from 9 November 2026 and is presented in the same format: a place to find IIED and partners at the climate conference. The site does not, in the material available, set out a full COP31 agenda or a list of every session, so treat the listing as an index of IIED-linked events rather than a definitive timetable.

Related events worth knowing about

Two events on the site sit alongside the COP listings and may be relevant if your interest is in IIED's wider convening work:

The housing justice event connects to IIED's wider urban work, including its spotlight on cities as places of justice and its research on forced evictions and climate change.

How to use the listings

1. Open the COP17 or COP31 event listing on iied.org.
2. Note the events attributed to IIED and its partners, together with their dates.
3. Cross-check each entry against the official conference programme, since the listing is an index rather than the authoritative schedule.
4. For context on the positions IIED is taking, read the spotlight on IIED's asks at the UN biodiversity summit and the related articles on nature finance and subsidy reform.

The main limitation to plan around: the listings tell you where to look, but they do not replace the official COP programmes for room numbers, times or registration requirements.

IIED treats cities as places of justice, not just engines of growth. Its urban work focuses on three connected areas: helping low-income urban communities prepare for and respond to climate change, challenging unfair and unsustainable housing systems, and building evidence on forced evictions and informal settlements. The entry point for much of this is Urban October, which IIED uses to promote a better urban future for all. This explainer is for readers who want to understand what IIED actually does on urban justice and where to find the relevant work.

The framing: cities as places of justice

IIED lists "Evolve cities as places of inspiration and justice" as one of its six organisational priorities. That framing matters because it links three issues that are usually handled separately:

• Climate adaptation in informal settlements — how people living in underserved urban areas prepare for and respond to a warming planet.
• Housing systems — challenging rules, markets and practices that produce unfair or unsustainable housing outcomes.
• Displacement and migration — generating evidence to improve support for migrants and refugees in cities.

The common thread is that urban inequality is produced by systems, not just by scarcity, so the work targets the systems.

What the work covers in practice

Informal settlements on a warming planet

IIED's published work includes "Better cities are possible: transforming informal settlements on a warming planet" (23 April 2025). The focus is on how informal settlements can be transformed rather than erased, and how climate risk is experienced by residents who lack secure tenure and basic services.

Housing justice and forced evictions

IIED convenes and publishes on housing justice as a justice-system question. A scheduled event, "Housing justice: how can people-centred justice principles address forced evictions?", applies people-centred justice principles to eviction. Related insight work examines forced evictions and climate change, including the relationship between eviction risk, CO2 emissions and anti-eviction struggles. The practical implication is that eviction is treated as both a housing and a climate question, not only a legal one.

Migrants and refugees in cities

IIED's stated aim is to help migrants, including displaced people, have brighter futures, and its urban spotlight includes work on improving support for migrants and refugees in cities. This connects displacement to urban policy rather than treating it as a separate humanitarian topic.

How to follow or use this work

Urban October is the annual moment IIED uses to pull this material together; the rest of the year the work appears as articles, insights and events rather than a single programme page.

What to keep in mind

IIED describes itself as an independent research organisation that delivers positive change on a global scale, working through research, partnerships and influence. Its urban output is therefore best read as evidence and advocacy aimed at shifting policy and practice, not as a service directory or funding programme. The site signals a subscription option but the available material does not specify terms, so check the site directly before assuming access conditions.