UKOTCF’s 7th conference on conservation and sustainability in UK Overseas Territories, Crown Dependencies and other small island states By Zoom 13th to 16th October 2025
Offers of talks and posters
The conference will run from Monday 13 to Thursday 16 October 2025. On the basis of the wide consultation on preferred topics, we plan to have sessions on the following topics:
- Sharing Experiences, including both practical conservation and building capacity (two sessions planned due to high interest)
- Financing/resourcing
- Using technology and data to inform and monitor conservation process and novel approaches to address threats to biodiversity
- Achieving Biodiversity & Sustainability targets
- Identifying and preparing for future challenges and opportunities
In addition, there will be scope for poster presentations (on a wider range of topics).
Talks and Posters
The organisers aim to select speakers to help structure each session in order to give a basis of information for informed discussions, conclusions and recommendations on the topic. The selection needs to take account of:
- Current important issues and priorities for conservation in the UKOTs/CDs;
- The importance of inviting workers from the territories wherever possible, supplemented by outside speakers where appropriate;
- Conference organisers will moderate this to ensure that, across the conference, as many territories as possible are included;
- With talks of up to 15 minutes, with 5 minutes of questions – these 5 minutes not being available to the speaker to extend the talk – a limited number of talks will be possible within each topic session, but there will also be time for wider discussion of the topic;
- In line with the successful 2021 conference, accepted speakers will need to pre-record and supply their talks and participate in person to address questions after their talk and participate in the discussion at the end of the session;
- Posters will be included on the conference (with fewer constraints on numbers); these will be allocated to topic sessions (but viewable longer term within the conference period) where appropriate, and a general section where not.
Those accepting an invitation to speak or present a poster will be asked to produce an abstract and any initial ideas of issues to include in the conference conclusions and recommendations. There are links to the full conclusions and recommendations from the 2021 conference, as well as to sub-sets of these for particular target audiences, at https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/our-conferences/onlineconference2021/, and for the 2015 conference at https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/our-conferences/sustaining-partnerships-gibraltar-2015/. These have since been used for a wide variety of purposes, including evidence to UK Parliamentary inquiries, UK Government calls for evidence etc, and were adopted by a later meeting of the UKOT/CD Environment Ministers Council. It is possible that there were too many conclusions and recommendations from that conference, and that should be borne in mind. However, if something is important, it should not be excluded for space reasons.
Key dates
Deadline for submission of posters and remaining talks, accompanied by abstracts and any submissions for incorporation in conclusions & recommendations | 1 May 2025 | Potential poster-authors and speakers |
Decision on acceptance of remaining talks and posters | 13 June 2025 | UKOTCF |
Deadline for receipt of video recordings of talks, and texts and (separately) illustrations for proceedings versions. Notes on preparation will be supplied with the invitations to present (If both the recording and the proceedings material are not received by this date. or if the recording is longer than the allocated duration, this may result in the presentation being cancelled and replaced by another.) There will be the possibility of making small changes to the proceedings version for a few days after the conference. | 15 Sept 2025 | Accepted speakers |
Deadline for receipt of electronic posters, and texts and (separately) illustrations for proceedings versions. (Guidance on the preparation of posters will be supplied later.) There will be the possibility of making small changes to the proceedings version for a few days after the conference. | 30 Sept 2025 | Accepted poster-presenters |
Hold conference | 13-16 Oct 2025 | UKOTCF |
Deadline for receipt of any amendments to proceedings versions of talks and posters | 22 Oct 2025 | Poster-authors and speakers |