The Permanent Forum recommends that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change prepare a special report within its seventh assessment cycle, led by Indigenous academics, scientists and traditional knowledge holders, to assess the opportunities for and threats against Indigenous Peoples in the areas of adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and relevant parties develop mechanisms for indigenous peoples’ participation, as appropriate, in all aspects of the international dialogue on climate change, particularly the forthcoming negotiations for the next Kyoto Protocol commitment period, including by establishing a working group on local adaptation measures and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples. The Forum encourages dialogue and cooperation among indigenous peoples, particularly indigenous women and youth, States, conservation and development organizations and donors in order to strengthen the participation of indigenous peoples in dialogue on climate change.
The Permanent Forum reiterates to the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and especially to the parties to the Nagoya Protocol, the importance of respecting and protecting indigenous peoples’ rights to genetic resources consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Consistent with the objective of “fair and equitable” benefit sharing in the Convention and Protocol, all rights based on customary use must be safeguarded and not only “established” rights. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has concluded that such kinds of distinctions would be discriminatory.
The Permanent Forum is concerned that legal obligations and commitments and indigenous peoples’ treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements with States are routinely denied and violated by States. With regard to interventions by indigenous peoples on unresolved land rights, including the Six Nations of the Grand River and others on which the Forum has made specific recommendations in the past, the Forum calls upon States to fairly and equitably redress the long-standing unresolved land rights issues through good-faith negotiations, consistent with the United Nations Declaration and without extinguishing indigenous peoples’ land rights.
The Permanent Forum requests the Global Environment Facility, as well as other funding mechanisms, to prioritize support for conservation approaches that are led or co-managed by indigenous peoples.
The Forum calls on the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity to continue its support to the national indigenous peoples biodiversity participatory mechanisms of the small island developing States through the Convention's island and biodiversity project and indigenous peoples program, in the promotion of sustainable biodiversity
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Framework Convention on Climate Change, in cooperation with States, provide adaptation funds to indigenous peoples affected by climate change-related disasters. Indigenous peoples whose lands have already disappeared or have become uninhabitable or spoilt due to seawater rise, floods, droughts or erosion, and who have thus become environmental refugees or displaced persons, should be provided with appropriate relocation with the support of the international community.
The Permanent Forum calls on all United Nations agencies and States to support the reclamation of traditional practices and laws leading to global solutions to climate change.
The Permanent Forum recommends that States develop laws and policies to ensure the recognition, continued vitality and protection from misappropriation of indigenous traditional knowledge.
Numerous indigenous representatives have raised region-specific concerns about the adverse impacts of climate change on their communities. The Permanent Forum will therefore explore the potential for conducting, by appropriate United Nations entities, assessments, studies and reviews of the economic, social and cultural impacts of climate change on indigenous nations, peoples and communities. For example, the secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification could conduct a study on climate change and desertification in the African region.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the International Council on Mining and Metals provide a list of and invite members of the Forum, members of affected indigenous peoples and indigenous experts to visit the project sites for the purpose of reporting back to the Forum at its tenth session.