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Indigenous Peoples and the Convention on Biological Diversity
This forum is for discussions on indigenous issues in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and in its constituents such as the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA). Issues appropriate to this forum include Articles 8(j), 10, intellectual property rights, technical capacity building and protocols and ethical principles for informaion sharing.

Indigenous Fisheries
Fish are important subsistence and economic resources for indigenous peoples, but also have tremendous spiritual and cultural importance as well. Native fisheries are threatened from a variety of threats, including the decline of traditional fishing knowledge and tenure systems, intrusion of state management into traditional authority, lack of secure rights to traditional takes, and stock endangerement from causes such as overfishing of straddling stocks, pollution, hybridization, introduction of non-native species, and habitat destruction. This forum is an open forum for discussing these issues from an indigenous point of view.

Passing of the Elders
Every time a native elder passes on, another native cosmos may disappear from human memory. This forum is for leaving memorials to honor the elders who have passed into the next world, and remember the knowledge that they held in trust for the generations to come, to remind the living of the duties they also bear to carry the traditions forward and maintain the diversity in human thought and being. This forum is also a way of reminding us that individuals are the inhabitants of the land and the keepers of biodiversity, and the goal of all these discussions and negotiations is to promote their knowledge and teachings.