MARE Conference 2021 Amsterdam, Netherlands

Mangrove ecosystems serve as vital nursery habitats for most economically important coastal marine species in the tropics. They are rookeries for shorebirds, act to mitigate impacts from storm surges, and serve as carbon sinks, which is critical to the blue economy. Anthropogenic interactions affecting mangroves are nearly identical throughout their range. For example, in Ghazi Bay, Kenya mangrove deforestation occurs for cooking fuel, in Malaysia for lumber for maritime construction and in the Western Caribbean, to create sandy white beaches for cruise ships. Globally, there are different needs, nevertheless the result is the same, deforestation and destruction of habitat indispensable to the existence of coastal fisheries and the blue economy they support. Additionally, Sargassum beaching events create new issues peoples and the blue economy have to integrate in seasonal activities.

Miscommunications around ecosystems management, caused by cultural differences among stakeholders, can often lead to complications. This is especially acute between outside stakeholders and Indigenous communities whose food security depends on the sustainable management of natural resources, like fisheries. Over time, Indigenous peoples have developed rich ecological knowledge systems around these ecosystems, yet this ecological knowledge has long been ignored in resource management policies.

To address this challenge to resource management in the blue economy, Marine Conservation without Borders has developed a biocultural curriculum for Indigenous students that uses Indigenous languages combined with the language of instruction used in the respective country. In collaboration with our Indigenous colleagues, we have ethno-translated our biocultural curriculum on mangrove ecosystems into eight Indigenous languages spoken across the Western Caribbean valuing the ecological knowledge of these communities as equal to western science. Each linguistic group has recognized their ecological knowledge in the prototype. This project combines biology education with Indigenous languages to provide a more equitable and culturally grounded environmental education for Indigenous students.