Lighthouse
Indigenous Knowledge and Ocean Solutions
Indigenous knowledge and wisdom can serve as a lighthouse, illuminating deeper cultural connections to the ocean and guiding new pathways for conservation. Indigenous Peoples and local communities hold knowledge and lived experiences that can deepen our understanding of the ecological, social, cultural, and economic forces shaping our ocean.
LIGHTHOUSE PROGRAMME AT IMCC8
More information coming soon.
YOU ARE INVITED TO CONTRIBUTE
Bring your stories, lived experience, knowledge, and practice to IMCC8 through art, song, storytelling, cultural immersion, or another participatory format.
Whether you are sharing Indigenous or traditional knowledge, community experience, creative practice, or another way of connecting people with the ocean, we invite you to contribute to this collective space.
In the face of today’s ocean crisis, strong and diverse voices are essential. Together, we can illuminate different pathways toward a more sustainable future for our shared ocean.
Submit your proposal by September 28.
Submit a Community-Led Programming Proposal
LIGHTHOUSE LEADS
Loyiso Dunga | Lighthouse Lead
Founder and Director of Asili Blue Renaissance (ASILI) and a marine biologist working at the intersection of Indigenous knowledge, science, and policy.
Katy Bear Nalven| Lighthouse Co-Lead
Ocean conservation researcher and practitioner focused on developing collaborative strategies for equitable conservation that support ecosystems, wildlife, and communities.
Marine Cusa | Lighthouse Co-Lead
Marine Cusa is part of the Lighthouse leadership team, contributing to the programme’s focus on community-led approaches, diverse knowledge systems, and collaborative ocean conservation.
Connecting Ideas to Action: the IMCC8 Reflections Program
IMCC is a rare opportunity: a few hundred of us convening in one place to share what we've been working on since the last time we met. What's missing is a way to share what we're learning before we leave. Someone describes how they solved a problem you've been stuck on for two years, and right now that conversation ends when the coffee break does. What does get captured usually surfaces months later in a proceedings paper, long after the conversation has moved on. The Reflections Program is our attempt to catch that while we're still together and turn it into something the community can use.
It builds on a session at IMCC7 in Cape Town, where around sixty people spent an afternoon reflecting on what the Congress had produced. It worked, so this time we're trying it across the whole of IMCC8, closing with a plenary on the final day. This is the first time IMCC has run something like this, and we'd like the community to shape what it becomes.
Drawing on diverse examples from different disciplines, regions and scales, the process will connect the dots between knowledge generation, decision-making and implementation. We want to hear about successes, challenges and practical experience, including what was involved, who needed to be at the table, how long things took, and what it cost.
The process will also explore common barriers, identify gaps and critical areas for support, and consider how we can break down silos and build stronger connections between early-career professionals, decision-makers, communities, experts from different disciplines and pioneers.
Importantly, the conversation won't end when the Congress does. We will capture the collective thinking generated during the event and consider how it can be carried forward into individual practice, regional and thematic communities, future IMCCs, and wider initiatives such as the Ocean Decade Blueprints of the UN Ocean Decade.
We encourage everyone to get involved! Over the course of the Congress, we will ask you for your feedback and reflections on session outcomes, things that you have learned, people you met, and conversations you had that changed your perspective. We also aim to organize lunchtime dialogues to discuss critical topics, challenge our thinking, learn from each other, and give people a chance to meet and interact.
Your IMCC reflection session planning team: Jason Landrum, Lydia Koehler, Shaili Johri, John Cigliano, Angelo Villagomez, Alia Hidayat, Nathan Fedrizzi, Andrew Lewin, Marine Cusa
Questions? Contact us at IMCCteam@conbio.org