In early February, approximately 3,000 marine protected area managers and ocean professionals gathered for a week in Vancouver, Canada for the fifth International Marine Protected Areas Congress (IMPAC5). Included in this number were seven Kinship Conservation Fellows and former program director, Jim Tolisano. While participating in side events and meetings, Fellows took advantage of the opportunity to connect across cohorts and countries, including with Vancouver-based Fellows, Jane Boles (2014) and Cornelia Rindt (2014). A small group of Fellows attending IMPAC5 also hosted a Kinship-supported side event, “Participating, Inclusion and Diversity in Marine Conservation.”
Hot on the heels of COP15, held in Montreal in December 2022, a strong focus at IMPAC5 was related to achieving milestones in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Many sessions focused on equity considerations related to the establishment and effective management of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and other tools, such as Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMS) and Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs).
We are grateful to the Host First Nations, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), for welcoming us into their traditional territories for this Congress. Further information is available here.
Kinship Conservation Fellows in attendance were Jane Boles (2014), Fernando Bretos (2011), Tanya Bryan (2010), Jen Chapman (2014), Kerstin Forsberg (2011), Karl Goodsell (2019), Cornelia Rindt (2014), Lucía Ruiz (2019), and Katie Thompson (2020).