Bi-regional cooperation between the EU, its Member States and Latin America has focussed on the environment since the 1st EU-LAC Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the creation of the Strategic Partnership in 1999. Within political dialogue and the subsequent EU-LAC summits, the environment has always been a priority, focusing on climate change, sustainability, biodiversity, natural resources and hazards. At the technical level, numerous projects and initiatives have been implemented with EU and Latin American funding focussing on climate change mitigation, loss of biodiversity, natural hazards, desertification, sustainable management of raw materials, and water and waste management, amongst many others. These projects are complemented with development and cooperation projects funded by the EU, as well as research and development projects funded under bilateral EU-LAC schemes or regional environmental initiatives. However, this results in a wide array of initiatives and projects oriented towards scientific development of specific topics or isolated small scale development projects. This approach misses the opportunity to create a structured exchange that goes beyond purely content issues and which could create a strategic input to the political dialogue.The ENSOCIO-LA project aims at establishing sustainable and integrated research and innovation cooperation between the EU and Latin American in the environment field, concretely in climate change, resource efficiency and raw materials, as well as at improving dissemination and the exploitation of research results in this area by different user groups. This will be achieved through networking and twinning of existing multilateral and bilateral projects funded by different sources, through the development of efficient interaction schemes between science, industry and users and the joint elaboration of future research priorities and joint activities.