Indigenous peoples have been shut out of international negotiations on climate change solutions and a mechanism should be set up enabling them to influence a new U.N. climate pact, an advocacy group said on Thursday.

In a report, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) urged governments participating in a U.N. climate change conference in Poland next month to agree to steps that would give indigenous and minority communities - who are already being hit by global warming - a stronger voice in the discussions.

"They have been effectively excluded from every major debate on the issue of controlling (greenhouse gas) emissions and mitigation strategies and that is simply not acceptable," Mark Lattimer, MRG's executive director, told AlertNet.

Many indigenous activists could not get into important sessions at the annual conference of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bali last year, leading them to demonstrate outside, the report says.

This year's gathering is expected to help craft a global agreement by December 2009 on carbon-capping mechanisms to succeed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change after 2012.

"Indigenous people must have a place at the table where decisions are being taken, where policies that severely and critically impact our people, are being made," says Alaska-born Patricia Cochran, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, in testimony in the report.

Cochran notes that the most devastating effects of climate change are being witnessed in the Arctic - from melting ice and coastal erosion to storms.

"There is not one of us who does not know someone who has perished. We have many people in our communities who are experienced hunters/gatherers, who go out on the land and simply fall through the ice and are never seen again," she says, adding that many villages are seeking to move because their homes and schools are falling into the sea.

Melting ice caps, desertification and extreme or unpredictable weather are destroying indigenous communities' crops and livestock around the world, which will lead to food shortages, poverty, migration and even death, the report says.

Indigenous and minority communities are particularly harmed by climate change because of their close relationship with the environment, from which they often make their living, according to the report. They also tend to live in poor, marginalised areas and in some cases are already victims of state discrimination, it says.

Examples include Uganda's Karamoja pastoralists who live in the arid northeast, Vietnam's Khmer Krom people from the flood-prone southern Mekong delta, and Taiwan's mountain-dwelling Paiwan people.

"Because of climate change, mountains are crumbling, the river has changed the way it is going, the village could disappear and be destroyed," Tung Chun-fa of the Paiwan says in the report. "Without the right relationship with nature we can't maintain our traditional culture."

"There are entire communities that could be lost," warned MRG's Farah Mihlar, who wrote the report. "Cultures, traditions and languages could be wiped off the earth."

Lattimer told AlertNet that talking to indigenous people with valuable knowledge of fragile ecosystems could prevent the international community from implementing climate change policies that have negative consequences.

In the case of biofuels, better consultation would have revealed much earlier the dangers of rushing into mass production, including environmental degradation and displacement, he said.

Lattimer added that similar mistakes must be avoided with plans to use carbon credit trading to stop deforestation, which will be discussed at December's U.N. conference.

"It is amazing how often (indigenous) communities are regarded as the problem...when in fact they should be seen as a good part of the solution," he said.

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