Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences of the Ministry of Environmental Protection has established successive relationships with more than 20 foreign universities and research institutes on exchange of visits, communication and science and technology cooperation. The Institute is the member of International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and International Water Association (IWA).

As one of the major technical support units of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Institute has sent experts to participate in the negotiations of international environmental conventions for many times, which include the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, the Nagoya Protocol of Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit-sharing, the Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Supplemental Protocol about the Liability and Remedy, the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, the Stockholm Convention, the Rotterdam Convention and so on. In recent years, averagely about 50 experts from the Institute and about 100 experts from abroad made exchange visits per year.

In the period of the National 11th Five-Year Plan, the Institute carried out about 20 international cooperation projects, such as the Sino-Canadian cooperation project "Thermal Separation Technology for Treatment of Organic Pollutants Contaminated Soil (TPS)", the Sino-US project "Demonstration Study on Ecological Aquaculture Technology and Its Environmental Impact", the Sino- Germany project "Promoting the Application of Pesticide Ecological Risk Assessment in China", the Sino-Australia project "ACEDP Public Participation in Social Environmental Impact Assessment and Watershed Water Pollution Control", and the Sino-Japan project "JICA Wastewater Advanced Treatment technology", etc.

In recent years, the Institute has successfully held the "International Forum of Biosafety" for four times. It also hosted the Biodiversity Monitoring Forum, the Sino- Netherlands Soil Pollution Control Technology Seminar and the Sino-US Rural Environmental Cooperation Seminar, as well as other large and medium-sized international academic conferences.