Incorporating traditional knowledge into IUCN Red List assessments of freshwater fishes of Lake Tanganyika

The Zoom link for the webinar is: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87830425841

Background

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species[1] now contains assessments of nearly all freshwater fishes of the world. However, some of these assessments are now out of date and need to be reassessed. IUCN are beginning this reassessment process starting with Africa and will be reassessing all freshwater fishes that are endemic to Lake Tanganyika, Eastern Africa culminating in a review workshop taking place in March 2025.

In parallel to this, IUCN recently published a report on the ‘Application of Indigenous & Local Knowledge (ILK) in IUCN Red List assessments’[2]. This report sets out the issues and general principles surrounding the application of indigenous and local knowledge in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and outlines some key steps to enhance use of this information in Red List assessments. Another key resource is the ‘IUCN Guidelines for gathering of fishers’ knowledge for policy development and applied use^[3]. This report includes details on the breadth of fishers’ knowledge that can be gathered, how it can be gathered, and how this information can be applied to support sustainable fisheries policy and broader applications in society.

With funds from the Government of Canada, IUCN wants to build on the findings of this report and develop and apply an approach to engage traditional knowledge holders relevant to the endemic fishes of Lake Tanganyika and explore how to better incorporate their knowledge into the assessment process. Lessons learned from this process will support the future Red List reassessments of freshwater biodiversity across Africa to better integrate traditional knowledge. 

To do this we will be undertaking two engagement activities (more details below):

1. Online ‘global’ engagement workshop to discuss key issues related to incorporating traditional knowledge into IUCN Red List assessments in general, and identify challenges and potential solutions.

2. In-person traditional knowledge holder engagement workshop. This workshop will bring together traditional knowledge holders relevant to the freshwater fishes of Lake Tanganyika and will aim to facilitate the integration of traditional knowledge into IUCN Red List assessments that are being reviewed at a consecutive Red List workshop. 

1. Online workshop - This is an invite-only event.

It will be held on the 31^st January from 12.00 – 15.00 GMT (3 hours). It will be held through the IUCN Engage Platform page – please enrol at the top of the page. Once you enrol, you will receive an email confirming your participation with instructions on how to join the meeting. There will also be simultaneous interpretation into Spanish and French. The meeting will be recorded and a post meeting transcript made available.

The workshop will be chaired by Viviana Figueroa. Viviana Omaguaca is an indigenous women, with over 20 years of professional experience working on traditional knowledge, indigenous people’s rights and women empowerment and rights. She is an international consultant on traditional knowledge and member of the Indigenous Women Network on Biodiversity, and the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity.

Viviana led for the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) negotiations on the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) and managed the implementation of capacity development programs for Indigenous peoples and local communities, particularly women in Asia, the Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. She has worked as professor on indigenous people’s rights, a legal advisor for the National Congress on indigenous people’s rights, an Advisory Committee member for UNICEF and the CBD, and a member of the Indigenous and Local Knowledge Task Force of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) facilitating diverse knowledge system dialogues.
 

The draft agenda is below, and the overall aim of the workshop is to

1. Develop a common understanding of the work undertaken so far on the incorporation of traditional knowledge into the IUCN Red List. Discuss key issues related to this, and identify key challenges and potential solutions in order to enhance this process.
2. Discuss initial plans for the in-person TK holder engagement workshop in Tanzania.

We expect that not all participants will stay for the 2^nd element of the workshop on discussing plans for the in-person workshop in Tanzania. 

Draft agenda

Step 2. Follow on in-person traditional knowledge holder engagement workshop

This two day in-person workshop will be held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on 7-8 March 2025. The participants to this workshop will comprise regional traditional knowledge holders and stakeholders.

The lead facilitator of the workshop will be Nerea Turreira. Nerea is an Assistant Professor in Ethnobiology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She has extensive experience working in the Global South, engaging directly with communities reliant on natural resources in East and West Africa, Central America, and Southeast Asia. Her work aims to bridge the gap between local knowledge and a democratic, inclusive scientific space, advocating for grassroots initiatives to adapt to global changes.  

The overall aim of this workshop is to engage with the traditional knowledge holders relevant to freshwater fishes of Lake Tanganyika and identify opportunities for the incorporation of this into the Red List assessments that are being reviewed at a Red List workshop being held directly after at the same venue.

Some of the participants from the traditional knowledge engagement workshop will be invited to attend the Red List assessment workshop to participate in the review process to facilitate the integration of traditional knowledge into the IUCN Red List assessments. This workshop is being funded through a different project.

A ‘lessons learned’ report will be produced that sets out the engagement approach used, its results including any issues and challenges met and how they were or could be overcome, and recommendations for integrating traditional knowledge into future IUCN Red List re-assessments on freshwater biodiversity in Africa, and for IUCN Red List assessments in general.

It needs to be stressed that the successful incorporation of tradition knowledge into IUCN Red List assessments faces significant challenges and will not be comprehensively solved through this project. However, the results and lessons learned will hopefully identify opportunities and address some of the challenges to inform future work and engagement that is required.