ANCESTRAL KNOWLEDGE, PEOPLES AND FULL LIFE IN HARMONY WITH THE FOREST
The Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations in the Amazon Basin (COICA) shall hold the First Regional Summit in the Amazon: ‘Ancestral knowledge’, people and life in full harmony with the forests. The meeting will take place on 15-18 August in the Hotel Taj Mahal Hotel, in the city of Manaus, Amazon state’s capital. With the aim of exchanging knowledge and experiences among the different stakeholders on issues such as ancestral knowledge, climate change, conservation and sustainable use of forests, the meeting will bring together representatives of indigenous peoples from the nine Amazonian countries, government representatives from these countries, international organizations and civil society based in the Amazon region, and developed countries. It is hoped this meeting makes political commitments and puts forwards practical actions for the conservation and sustainable use of forests in the Amazon basin and Latin America.
Indigenous peoples and international negotiations
Participants will have the opportunity to discuss and measure progress and developments made in the UN Climate Conference in order to develop jointly-agreed arrangements to be referred to COP 17 meeting, to be held in December 2011 in Durban, South Africa, and to the Rio Conference 20 +, to be held in June 2012. The focus of these arrangements will be the rights of indigenous peoples in the context of full life in harmony with the forest and climate change.
There will also be room for the analysis of positive and negative impacts of the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (ABS) adopted under the Convention on Biological Diversity (UN CBD), held in October 2010 in Nagoya, Japan. Brazil was one of the first countries to ratify the protocol in February 2011. The adequacy of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the implementation of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 169 are the main documents on rights of indigenous peoples in the international sphere, therefore, shall also be addressed during the meeting in Manaus. Local people also expect they can provide recommendations and policy commitments during the Summit to be taken into consideration in the Rio+ 20 Conference.
The Summit seeks to enhance the ancestral wisdom and knowledge of their people, find strategies to address cli-mate change and convey to the world the way these people understand and preserve the nature, as well as to pro-mote food security and medical techniques developed by indigenous peoples and populations that depend on the Amazon rainforest.
For more information please contact: Juan Carlos Jintiach, Coordinator of the indigenous organizations of the Amazon Basin - COICA E-mail:juanka@coica.org.ec
