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PAGE 26 ASSERTING NATIVE RESILIENCE: PACIFIC RIM INDIGENOUS NATIONS FACE THE CLIMATE CRISIS mate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, restoring our food sovereignty and food independence , and strengthening our Indigenous families and nations. We offer to share with humanity our Traditional Knowledge, innovations, and practices relevant to climate change, provided our fundamental rights as intergenerational guardians of this knowledge are fully recognized and respected. We reiterate the urgent need for collective action. Agreed by consensus of the participants in the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change, Anchorage Alaska, April 24, 2009 INTERNATIONAL INDIGENOUS PEOPLES FORUM ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IIPFCC) POLICY PAPER ON CLIMATE CHANGE Discussed and ἀnalized at the IIPFCC meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, September 26–27, 2009. Mother Earth is no longer in a period of climate change, but in climate crisis.... Indigenous Peoples have a vital role in defending and healing Mother Earth. We uphold that the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples...must be fully respected in all decision-making processes and activities related to climate change. —Anchorage Declaration (Indigenous Peoples Global Summit on Climate Change, 2009) Climate Change Calls for Historic Transformations 1. Climate change, in the light of the current global financial, economic, environmental, and food crises, represents an unprecedented challenge and opportunity for humanity to transform global economic, political, social, [and] cultural relations to live in balance with Mother Earth. Reaching climate equilibrium and justice is inseparable from acknowledging the historical responsibilities of developed countries while promoting social equity between and within nations, maintaining ecological integrity, addressing the climate and ecological food security and food sovereignty for Indigenous Peoples. 10. We call on United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to conduct a fast-track assessment of short-term drivers of climate change, specifically black carbon, with a view to initiating negotiation of an international agreement to reduce emission of black carbon. 11. We call on States to recognize, respect, and implement the fundamental human rights of Indigenous Peoples, including the collective rights to traditional ownership, use, access, occupancy, and title to traditional lands, air, forests, waters, oceans, sea ice, and sacred sites as well as to ensure that the rights affirmed in Treaties are upheld and recognized in land use planning and climate change mitigation strategies. In particular, States must ensure that Indigenous Peoples have the right to mobility and are not forcibly removed or settled away from their traditional lands and territories, and that the rights of Peoples in voluntary isolation are upheld. In the case of climate change migrants, appropriate programs and measures must address their rights, status, conditions, and vulnerabilities. 12. We call upon states to return and restore lands, territories , waters, forests, oceans, sea ice, and sacred sites that have been taken from Indigenous Peoples, limiting our access to our traditional ways of living , thereby causing us to misuse and expose our lands to activities and conditions that contribute to climate change. 13. In order to provide the resources necessary for our collective survival in response to the climate crisis, we declare our communities, waters, air, forests, oceans, sea ice, traditional lands, and territories to be “Food Sovereignty Areas,” defined and directed by Indigenous Peoples according to customary laws, free from extractive industries, deforestation, and chemical-based industrial food production systems (i.e., contaminants, agro-fuels, genetically modified organisms). 14. We encourage our communities to exchange information while ensuring the protection and recognition of and respect for the intellectual property rights of Indigenous Peoples at the local, national, and international levels pertaining to our Traditional Knowledge, innovations, and practices. These include knowledge and use of land, water and sea ice, traditional agriculture, forest management, ancestral seeds, pastoralism, food plants, animals, and medicines and are essential in developing cli- PAGE 27 I. CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES of indigenous peoples and local communities to respond to climate change. 5. Respect for the human rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, valuing our traditional knowledge and innovations, and supporting our local mitigation and adaptation strategies are critical and invaluable requirements towards adequate holistic solutions to climate change. As such, our local strategies and priorities must be reflected in National Adaptation and Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) and National Adaptation Plans and strategies of Action (NAPAs), in the development and implementation of which we must participate fully and effectively. The distinct roles and responsibilities of indigenous women and youth will need to be considered, underlining the importance of their inclusion in decision-making and planning processes. 6. Our rights to self-determination and free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC...

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