The United Nations has a big idea. Namely, individuals give up their personal property rights and in return the United Nations will manage land use worldwide for the good of all. This idea has a name: it’s called Agenda 21. It’s been around since 1992 when, at an environment and development conference in Rio de Janeiro, the United Nations put forth a proposal for global land management that sounded so good 178 nations signed up, including President George H.W. Bush for the United States.
Such treaties require approval by the U.S. Congress to become law, but Agenda 21 was never ratified. On one hand, it promised lucrative public/private partnerships, which Congress liked. But as seductive as that was, the treaty’s assault on something as all-American as personal property rights gave even socialist legislators pause.
Then came Clinton-Gore, a team enamored with the idea of environmental safeguards on a planetary scale. So President Clinton bypassed Congress with an executive order that instructed federal agencies to “reinvent” themselves using the centerpiece of Agenda 21 – sustainable development – as their guide. For the last 20 years they’ve been doing exactly that. Today, Agenda 21 plans under many names exist in every level of government.
Many see Agenda 21 not as the playbook for environmental preservation it purports to be, but rather a ploy for world governance – an attempt to control day-to-day life everywhere. Give up your property rights and you give up all your rights, critics contend. Some of the language surrounding Agenda 21 sounds problematic. For example, from a U.N. report on Habitat, “Land … ownership is a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, and therefore contributes to social injustice.” Or this, from the secretary general at Earth Summit, “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class are not sustainable.” And Agenda 21’s most unavoidable consequence as noted by the vice chairman of the Wetlands project, “Individual rights will have to take a back seat to the collective.”
Problematic or downright scary? Abolition of property rights, after all, is central to communism.
Agenda 21 proponents readily admit they regard everything from ski resorts to livestock grazing, fences, paved roads, logging, dams, reservoirs, power line construction and even single-family homes as unsustainable. Property rights – national sovereignty, in fact – are forms of unsustainable development and have to go. Say goodbye to capitalism. Forget the benefits of free enterprise. What Declaration of Independence? With too many people on the planet, there is no independence. It’s time to keep track of how and where you live, what you eat, the amount of water and energy you use, and so on. We have the technology; Agenda 21 is the implementation plan.
President Obama has extended the reach and funding for Agenda 21 programs. As his Council on Sustainable Development (a collaboration of federal agencies, corporations and nonprofits) put it recently, “Private land-use decisions are often driven by strong economic incentives that result in several ecological and aesthetic consequences…” The council suggests that the key to overcoming these consequences is through public policy.
This spring the Republican majority in Maine’s Legislature proposed some public policy of its own – a bill to keep Agenda 21 from ever being implemented here. Their effort failed. Many other states and communities have been successful, but they are badly outnumbered.
There’s the other side of the argument, of course. And it’s a strong case that we’re polluting our planet, stripping our forests, using up our resources without regard to future generations, killing off species at an eye-popping rate, warming the atmosphere and seas irreversibly, and encouraging economic growth regardless of long-term consequences. Isn’t it time to cut consumption a bit? Give biodiversity its due – for our own sake? In a world that grows ever-smaller, what can be so bad about conservation easements, community-based gardens, or the nearly 90 land trusts in Maine that protect our natural resources from developers who, let’s face it, aren’t pictured on any of our money.
Whatever else, Agenda 21 is ambitious. It isn’t just interested in global land use as a theory, it’s interested in what you’re doing in that patch of land you call a back yard. Never before has “think global, act local” (a phrase popularized by Yoko Ono) taken on a more ominous tone. Proponents want to gradually abolish all private control over property, educate populations for global citizenry, and monitor individual compliance. They see their grand, sweeping plan as humanity’s best hope for survival. And the leaders of 178 nations, at least in principle, agree with them.
I’m holding out for a better offer. One that doesn’t require shredding our Constitution just to keep a few weekend warriors from dumping an occasional can of paint in the woods. Besides, Agenda 21 sure isn’t what John Locke, the British essayist who inspired our founding fathers, had in mind when he wrote, “Government has no other end but the preservation of property.”
Rick Roberts (reroberts46@yahoo.com) is a veteran of Boston’s advertising community and the U.S. Army. He lives in Windham. He is author of two books: “Digital Darling,” recently awarded Honorable Mention at the New England Book Festival; and the boomer rant, “I Was Much Happier When Everything I Owned Was In The Back Seat Of My Volkswagen.” Both are available through bookstores, Amazon.com, or visit BabyBoomerPress.com.
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