Be part of the IUCN World Conservation Congress!
The IUCN World Conservation Congress 2016 will bring together several thousand leaders and decision-makers from government, civil society, indigenous peoples, business, and academia with the goal of conserving the environment and harnessing the solutions nature offers to global challenges. This is an opportunity not to be missed!
If you want to be part of the Congress and host an event during the Forum, the Call for Contributions (9 June to 15 October 2015) is your one and only entry point! This is a competitive process and successful events must meet a series of criteria.
There are a total of 560 slots available for hosting an event during the Forum (135 workshops, 200 Knowledge Café sessions, 200 posters and 25 training courses at the Conservation Campus). There is also a series of criteria that will be used to select the proposals that will make it to the final Congress programme. These include:
- The relevance of the proposal to the Congress Theme and to the draft IUCN Programme 2017-2020;
- The relevance of the proposal to the overall Congress objectives;
- Its contribution to one or more of the overall Forum targets: to showcase that conservation works, to promote interaction and participation, to catalyze new actions and transformative initiatives (higher ranking if the latter);
- Contribution to international conservation debates (SDG; CBD; UNFCCC, etc.);
- The different perspectives and positions on the topic addressed during the session; or
- The broad scope of stakeholders (including from a gender and an intergenerational perspective) associated with the topic.
This time, two criteria will be particularly relevant for the selection process. First of all, the “One Programme Rule”, already in place in previous congresses, will remain valid for Hawai‘i. This means that no single organisation or individual can host an event on its own. To make it through the selection process, you need to be able to demonstrate the active involvement of different partners in the planning, development and staging of your proposal. This rule is mandatory for all workshop and Conservation Campus proposals, and highly recommended for Knowledge Cafés.
Secondly, we really want to make of this Congress a turning point in the world of conservation. For this, we need to move away from the “old school” of organising a workshop around a series of PowerPoint presentations with no space for discussion or exchange of ideas. We therefore highly recommend using the services of a professional facilitator in the planning of your proposal. The detailed description of how you plan to engage the audience during your session will have a heavy weight in the selection process at the end of October. If you don’t know any professional facilitators, IUCN can provide you a list for you to select from.
The full list of selection criteria can be found in the Outline of the Call for Contribution, together with some guidance on how to submit a successful proposal. Make sure you read this outline before submitting your proposal.
Ready to go?
Great! Just click on the link below to be redirected to the Congress Portal. This is where all the action will take place. You will be able to check proposals already submitted by other people, contact these people to see if you can partner with them, or create and manage your own proposals. Good luck with developing your proposal and… see you in Hawai‘i!
Click here to access the Congress Portal and create your proposal
For more Information concerning the the World Conservation Congress 2016