The Permanent Forum is concerned about reports of UNDP entering into a strategic partnership with the oil company GeoPark, a private entity that has been accused by indigenous communities of disregarding their rights, to carry out economic development activities in Colombia without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous communities that will be affected. This partnership contradicts standard 6 (indigenous peoples) of the UNDP social and environmental standards, and the Forum urges UNDP to suspend all related partnership activities until a proper free, prior and informed consent process can be carried out.
The Permanent Forum urges States to increase the provision of funding to indigenous peoples and communities for water and wastewater systems in order to improve the quality of drinking water and wastewater infrastructure, as well as address water pollution and degradation in indigenous communities.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples should serve as a key and binding framework in the formulation of plans for development and should be considered fundamental in all processes related to climate change at the local, national, regional and global levels. The safeguard policies of the multilateral banks and the existing and future policies on indigenous peoples of United Nations bodies and other multilateral bodies should be implemented in all climate change-related projects and programmes.
The Permanent Forum welcomes the adoption of the Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources. It requests FAO to give priority to strategic priority No. 6 (support indigenous and local production systems and associated knowledge systems of importance to the maintenance and sustainable use of animal genetic resources), and to further develop relevant approaches to implement it, including rights-based approaches and payment for services that support the custodianship of local breeds by indigenous peoples.
The Permanent Forum requests the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the World Intellectual Property Organization to assist it in finalizing the study on sui generis systems based on customary laws for the protection of traditional knowledge with a view to advancing its protection.
The Forum recommends that the Convention on Biological Diversity and other relevant United Nations bodies such as UNEP, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), UNDP, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the World Bank, WIPO, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, support indigenous peoples’ organizations in order to develop capacity on research, work and proposals on human indicators applicable to the implementation of the environmental conventions and the plans and programmes of work of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The Forum recommends that the United Nations Forum on Forests develop effective means to monitor and verify the participation of indigenous peoples in forest policy-making and sustainable forest management, and establish a mechanism, with the participation of indigenous peoples, to assess the performance of governmental and intergovernmental commitments and obligations to uphold and respect indigenous peoples’ rights.
States should recognize indigenous peoples’ rights to forests and should review and amend laws that are not consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other international standards on indigenous peoples’ land and natural resource rights, including over forests. This includes indigenous peoples’ customary law on land and resource rights and the right to be fully involved in decision-making processes.