States, United Nations agencies, funds and programs should mobilize support for indigenous peoples who are extremely vulnerable to natural disasters.
The Permanent Forum endorses the recommendations submitted on 8 May 2009 to the fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants by the Indigenous Peoples Caucus to increase and ensure the formal participation of indigenous peoples in that process.
The Permanent Forum calls upon Member States to support cross-border cultural communications and initiatives between indigenous peoples of the region to foster their common languages, heritage and traditional knowledge.
The Forum invites other international and regional institutions also to engage in cooperation with the Forum, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, UNAIDS, the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the Economic Commission for Europe, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Arctic Council, the Asian Development Bank, the African Union, the Organization of American States, the Association of South-East Asian Nations, and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
The Permanent Forum welcomes the adoption by the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity of two additional indicators for traditional knowledge: (a) status and trends in land use change and land tenure in the traditional territories of indigenous and local communities, and (b) status and trends in the practice of traditional occupations, to complement the adopted indicator on status and trends in traditional languages. The Forum urges the secretariat of the Convention and agencies working on these issues, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), ILO, FAO, IFAD and the International Land Coalition, to collaborate with a view to fully operationalizing those indicators.