“Thank you, Chair.
The IIFB generally supports the functional review of the secretariat. We believe this exercise will lead to greater effectiveness and efficiency. We would like to highlight the key points from the statement we submitted earlier.
Indigenous Peoples and local communities have benefited from the strong support of the People and Biodiversity Unit through many years of collaborative work. The placement of the Unit under its current division reflects the text and intent of the Convention itself, in which traditional knowledge is positioned on equal footing with science as a basis for biodiversity action and decision-making.
We are concerned about the proposal to place the People and Biodiversity Unit within the Division of Strategic Partnerships, Finance and Economy. We believe the Unit would be more appropriately located within the Division of Policy, Capacity and Monitoring. This would be consistent with the eight goals of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework that explicitly include Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and would respond to the establishment of the Subsidiary Body on Article 8(j) and related provisions.
We support the ongoing consultations on the recommendations within the Secretariat and believe that these consultations would benefit from the inclusion of Parties, as well as Indigenous Peoples and local communities. We consider that our inputs and perspectives will contribute to strengthening the Secretariat.
We thank the Parties who supported our statement when this agenda item was opened.
Thank you.”
The full statement is available at: https://iifb-indigenous.org/…/en-iifb-sbi6-item10…
