Global Knowledge Symposium (NYC) – Overview

The Tracking Change… research program has developed over the last four years to advance knowledge through community-university research activities in the Mackenzie River Basin with emerging projects in the lower Mekong River Basin (Mun River) and in the lower Amazon Basin (Tapajos River).

 

This year’s Globa Knowledge Symposium marks an adjustment from our scheduled meeting in Brazil and is now being held in conjunction with the United Nation’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFOII) at UN Headquarters in NY from April 22nd to May 3rd, 2019.

 

We decided to move our meeting because of the uncertainty of the political environment.

 

The theme of this year’s PFOII is “Traditional knowledge: Generation, transmission, and protection” and I think that our work in Tracking Change is perfectly suited.

 

As we are mid-way through the Tracking Change project, this Symposium will:

  • Create opportunities for Indigenous community participants from diverse river basins to share their own local and traditional knowledge about social-ecological change and develop a better understanding of its significance at global scales;
  • Develop a deeper understanding of the knowledge, practices, and beliefs of Indigenous fishers through place-based learning activities;
  • Identify and advance theories and conceptual frameworks that can help explain trends and patterns in the livelihoods of fishing communities in the Mackenzie-Mekong-Amazon;
  • Strengthen research collaboration between graduate students, junior and senior faculty and community knowledge holders (fishers)and partners from Canada, Thailand, and Brazil;
  • Build global academic-community-policy networks that can effect change in the governance of the Mackenzie-Mekong-Amazon;
  • Catalyze critical thinking about the methodological best-practice for studying and communicating about fisher knowledge and practices;
  • Advance community reporting and academic publication through knowledge mobilization exercises.

Participants of the Symposium will be able to meet with other academic and community researchers and to share their research related to fishing livelihoods by making a formal presentation.  They will each have an opportunity to participate in group thinking activities and, to network with attendees of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations.