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Addressee: ECOSOC, General Assembly, Member States UN system/UN agencies
Full Text
The Permanent Forum calls for urgent, serious and unprecedented action by the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly, along with all United Nations bodies and agencies, recognizing that climate change is an urgent and immediate threat to human rights, health, sustainable development, food sovereignty, and peace and security, and calls upon all countries to implement the highest, most rigorous and most stringent levels of greenhouse gas reduction.
Responses
The Government of Mexico reports: 9. The fourth National Encounter of Rural, Indigenous and Farming Women was held from 11 to 14 October 2008, in Boca del Río, Veracruz, to provide opportunities for the exchange of experience among rural, indigenous and farming
women so as to contribute to the improvement of their community projects and influence the design of gender-focused public policies in the area of food security.
The encounter was attended by 400 rural, indigenous and farming women from all over Mexico, and by non governmental organizations and representatives of the three levels of government involved in rural development and in women’s programmes.
DESA reports: 33. The discussions during the two-year cycle of the sixteenth and seventeenth sessions of the Commission on Sustainable Development (which will end on 15 May 2009) have already been shaped by the strength of indigenous peoples’ views and inputs. The summary of the Chairman of the sixteenth session includes explicit references to indigenous peoples in 20 separate paragraphs15 that address issues important to current and past recommendations of the Permanent Forum, including: the need for access to land and secure land tenure, especially for women; the importance of local and traditional knowledge in agriculture, integrated water resources management, drought and desertification adaptation and mitigation; the need to support capacity-building for local communities and indigenous peoples according to the Bali Strategic Plan; and promotion of small-scale traditional agriculture and sustainable livestock production. The Chairman also stated that implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples would further efforts to achieve sustainable development goals.
The report of Colombia highlights the role of indigenous territories (resguardos) and national parks in mitigating climate change by preserving forests. This is especially the case in the Amazon Region and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
UN-HABITAT has several instruments, programmes, projects and activities that are relevant to indigenous peoples in relation to climate change and livelihoods issues.
Final Report of UNPFII Session 7 (2008)
Area of Work
