The Permanent Forum calls upon Member States to start the work, in the context of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, of creating a place and a voice for indigenous peoples in the governance of the world’s oceans. This effort involves the participation of indigenous peoples in all aspects of the work and decision-making regarding the Convention on the Law of the Sea, including the environmental provisions and the delimitation of the continental shelf. It may also include establishing advisory committees of indigenous peoples to guide the work under the Convention, as has been done under the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The Permanent Forum commits to facilitating informal online regional dialogues between Member States and indigenous peoples on autonomy and self-governance to support the development of guiding principles for the realization of the rights of indigenous peoples to autonomy and self-government. The Permanent Forum invites the Inter-Agency Support Group on Indigenous People’s Issues to participate in the organization of these regional dialogues and in the preparation of a discussion paper on this matter to be presented at the twenty-first session of the Forum. The Permanent Forum also invites the Group of Friends of Indigenous Peoples to encourage the active participation of Member States in this endeavour.
The Permanent Forum recommends that United Nations agencies review their policies, which presently allow them to assist only indigenous peoples in developing countries, and to urgently revise such policies to ensure that all indigenous peoples, in both developed and developing countries, have access to resources, technical assistance and other support from all United Nations agencies and funds.
The Permanent Forum recognizes the importance of indigenous peoples knowledge systems as the basis of their development with culture and identity and therefore recommends that ongoing international processes, such as negotiations on the international regime on access and benefit-sharing of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore of the World Intellectual Property Organization, should recognize and integrate the crucial role and relevance of indigenous knowledge systems in accordance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The Permanent Forum recommends following the example of indigenous peoples, who have been the stewards of the land and sea for millenniums. When allocating research and development funding and setting the criteria for clean development mechanism projects, policymakers at the State and multilateral levels must look beyond the simple question of whether a particular form of alternative energy or carbon absorption technique can provide a short-term reduction in greenhouse gases. Policymakers should consider the long-term sustainability of any mitigation policy they choose.
The Permanent Forum expresses its appreciation to Special Rapporteurs, Ms. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz and Mr. Parshuram Tamang for their report entitled “Oil palm and other commercial tree plantations, monocropping: impacts on indigenous peoples’ land tenure and resource management systems and livelihoods”. The Permanent Forum recommends that further analysis be undertaken to include information received and gathered from Governments, the logging and plantation sectors and their networks, indigenous peoples, non-governmental organizations and intergovernmental bodies, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Forum on Forests. The Permanent Forum reappoints Ms. Tauli-Corpuz to continue as the Special Rapporteur to draft the follow-up report, using existing resources, to be presented at the 2008 session of the Permanent Forum.
This dialogue follows on the international expert group meeting on the theme “Conservation and the rights of indigenous peoples” (E/C.19/2019/7). The Permanent Forum endorses the recommendations from the meeting and urges States, conservation organizations, indigenous peoples and United Nations entities to work together in implementing the recommendations.