Indigenous people are being pushed off their lands to make way for an expansion of biofuel crops around the world, threatening to destroy their native cultures by forcing them into big cities, the head of a UN panel said.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, said some of the native people most at risk live in Indonesia and Malaysia, which together produce 80 percent of the world's palm oil -- a crop used for biofuels.
In one Indonesian province,West Kalimantan, the UN has identified 5 million indigenous people who will likely be displaced by biofuel crops, she said.
"The speed with which this is happening we don't really realize in our part of the world," Ida Nicolaisen, an expert in indigenous cultures and member of the UN forum, said at a news conference on Monday.
Tauli-Corpuz said the forum will discuss the threat posed by biofuel crop expansion during its annual two-week meeting in New York, which opened on Monday.
Biofuels, which are made from agricultural products, are seen by many as a cleaner and cheaper way to meet the world's soaring energy needs.
In its first major report on biofuels last week, however, the UN warned that the benefits of the alternative energy source may be offset by serious environmental problems and increased food prices for poor people in the developing world.
Many biofuel crops, the report said, require the best land to grow, diverting food crops. They also demand large amounts of water and chemical fertilizers, the report said.
The clearing of forests to make room for these new crops is putting at particular risk the 60 million indigenous people who depend on forests almost entirely for their survival, according to the forum.
They are being forced to migrate to already overcrowded cities, where many of them end up living in slums with limited access to services and poor housing, Nicolaisen said.
Tauli-Corpuz said the forum is pushing the General Assembly to pass a long-delayed declaration on indigenous rights, which she said will protect native peoples from being pushed off their lands as the demand for these biofuel crops grows.
The declaration states that indigenous peoples have the right to their own identity, culture and language, and to self-determination. It also says governments should respect their rights to traditional lands and resources, and that native peoples have the right to decide on any development project in their community.
The UN Human Rights Council approved the declaration last June and recommended that the 192-member General Assembly adopt it. But the draft failed to make it out of the assembly's human rights committee last November because of opposition from African countries who argued it contradicted their national Constitutions.
A handful of developed nations with large native populations -- New Zealand, Australia and Canada -- also opposed the draft.
The three countries said self-determination could threaten the "territorial integrity" of existing UN member states.
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