Abstract

Communities around the world are facing the degradation of Earth’s natural resources, with Indigenous communities witnessing firsthand how these environmental changes threaten their livelihoods and economic stability. Combined with the cultural, socioeconomic, and political forces that systematically erode cultural and linguistic identity, many Indigenous and Creole communities struggle to understand the ecological challenges imposed upon them by external forces. This struggle is worsened by the lack of a relationship between Indigenous knowledge and Western science. The information that Indigenous communities need to combat ecosystem degradation is not written in the languages they use in their homes and local communities. This means that scientific information is not only unavailable in many cases, but also often fails to relate to the Indigenous ecological knowledge systems they use to understand the world around them (UNESCO, 2021). Marine Conservation without Borders (MCB) research has developed methods that seamlessly combine Indigenous place-based ecological knowledge systems with Western ecological knowledge systems. This allows the MCB team to create next generation biocultural curricula for the linguistically diverse education systems of Mesoamerica, the greater Caribbean basin and beyond.

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