The closed-door session, held last October in Long Island, focused mainly on using the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UN CSD) in Rio de Janeiro to dramatically change the world under the guise of saving the environment. And all of the global body’s top “green” officials were in attendance to help formulate the plan.
The confidential minutes of the meeting, obtained and posted online by Fox News last week, outline the goals and agenda for the global sustainability gathering this June — dubbed Rio+20 — that will be held on the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Earth Summit. Using environmentalism as the rationale, that conference laid the groundwork for the global effort the UN hopes to expand and solidify in the years to come.
According to critics and the UN itself, however, the global body and its allies around the world have ambitions that go far beyond simply protecting the environment. In fact, many experts — especially in the United States — fear that the UN actually envisions a global government, an erosion of private-property rights, and even an end to the individual freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. And based on UN documents dealing with “sustainability,” the concerns appear to be justified.
During the secretive October meeting on sustainability, attended by the leaders of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB), Secretary General Ban made more than a few bold statements. He said, for example, that pursuing “sustainable development” was the “greatest imperative of the current generation of leadership, as well as of UN system organizations," according to the minutes.
Top Rio+20 official and UN Under-Secretary General Sha Zukang, who served as a senior diplomat with the brutal communist dictatorship ruling mainland China for nearly four decades, also laid out a grandiose agenda for the world’s future. In recent weeks, he has even been making public statements demanding "strong decisions” and “strong actions” from national governments participating in the Rio+20 summit.
According to the minutes of the secret meeting, Sha stressed that the main objective of the conference will be to solidify support from governments around the world in the global pursuit of “sustainable development.” That, he noted, will require the erection of an “institutional framework” — otherwise known as the global enforcement bureaucracies to mandate compliance by the world’s national governments and populations.
Another top priority will be the global transition toward a so-called “green economy,” he said. The new economic order envisioned by the global body would prioritize what the UN touts as “poverty eradication,” “equality,” and more. But the implementation of the highly controversial “Agenda 21” plan needs to continue full speed ahead as well, Sha noted.
“On the green economy theme, [Sha] stated that Rio+20 should be the catalyst to integrate the economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainable developments, energize implementation of the sustainable development agenda, and lead to coherent policies and programs at all levels — integration, implementation and coherence,” the leaked summary of the meeting explained.
While acknowledging that there was considerable disagreement on what a “green economy” actually represents, Sha and others at the meeting suggested using the UN CSD in Rio to first decide what it was not. That, he said, would help define what it “could be.”
"[The green economy] should re-orient public and private decision making to reflect and respect natural capital, synergize growth and environment protection, and include the poor as main beneficiaries, as well as active participants in building such a green economy,” Sha explained according to the meeting minutes, though he admitted there was no real or accepted definition.
The former representative of Beijing’s murderous regime also said that the Rio+20 conference should produce a list of “sustainable development goals” for national, regional, and global policy-makers to help them implement the policies being sought. Authority, meanwhile, would need to steadily gravitate toward regional and global entities as local and national governments are “integrated” into the world system. Science and education, meanwhile, must be “at the service of sustainability.”
Among the top priorities cited by Sha were “combating poverty,” creating so-called green jobs, “sustainable agriculture,” promotion of “renewable” energy, “management of oceans,” and more. And while most of those goals seem innocuous at first, critics warn that unforeseen dangers lurk behind the innocent-sounding terminology.
Also on Sha’s wish list was what the minutes identified as “sustainable human settlements.” This concept in particular has attracted a barrage of criticism — especially in America — by a broad array of experts concerned about individual liberty, property rights, and national sovereignty.
According to critics, who base their opposition to the schemes on the content of UN documents, so-called “sustainable” settlements would involve cramming people into compact “human habitation zones.” Much of the world would be off limits to people. The small areas permitted for use by humanity, meanwhile, would be tightly regulated. And consumption would also be severely restricted.
Other key points made during the meeting included the idea of creating a sort of “State of the Planet” update each year. Also on the agenda: “the need for a narrative about planetary responsibility and the UN role,” the minutes explained.
Top Rio+20 summit organizer Brice Lalonde, a socialist activist and former Green Party leader who served as the French Environment Minister, proposed trying to market the conference and the UN as “the voice of the planet and its people.” And those people must start to think differently: “A conceptual move was needed towards much more redistribution and much more equity around the world, i.e. One Planet," Lalonde told participants as summarized in the leaked document.
The minutes also noted that some governments ruling developing countries — mostly corrupt dictatorships enabled by the UN and foreign aid from rich countries — were still suspicious of the “sustainable development” agenda. But that should not be a problem; according to the summary document, they would be receiving plenty of “development assistance” to ensure that the benefits of supporting the scheme were fully understood.
One participant in the closed meetings, International Labor Organization boss Juan Somavia, articulated a plot to help the UN achieve its goals at a conference in 2015. The idea would be to establish a "People's Summit" — which, the minutes explained, would be "set around a basic agreement negotiated in advance" — to ensure that the population felt a sense of "ownership." Then, the UN could push societies and national governments into compliance more forcefully, the minutes noted.
Also discussed at the meeting was the global economic crisis and how it could be used to advance the broader UN agenda. Senior CEB staffer and International Monetary Fund insider Elliot Harris, supposedly an economist educated in Germany, told participants that more central planning was needed to achieve UN goals.
Citing a report prepared for the CEB, Harris explained that the crisis offered the UN and other world institutions a chance to deal with globalization using a "renewed recognition of the role of the State" and "an appreciation of the value of collective and coordinated action at the global level." And because of globalization, a planetary “coherent economic system” and global policies are called for, he claimed. Centralized world control of everything from education and health to economic policy and environmental protection — all based on UN values with enforced compliance — would also be needed, he explained, citing the report. Many meeting participants wholeheartedly agreed.
UN Environment Program boss Achim Steiner, who moderated much of the meeting, called on attendees to take action and provide feedback on the report to "help the system rally around an agenda that guaranteed the future of the UN." He also noted that the document and participants’ comments were not intended to be made public.
Secretary General Ban then concluded by touting the "historic opportunity" to rally the world toward UN goals, saying the lack of public trust in government needed to be overcome. Participants should seize the "unique opportunity" to re-shape the world, he said — not only for the benefit of his legacy, but for the aggrandizement of the entire UN and all of its minions. American critics, on the other hand, hope people will see through the UN's machinations and demand a complete U.S. withdrawal from the dangerous global body and its ever-expanding tentacles.
Photo of Ban Ki-moon: AP Images
Related articles:
Ambitious UN Sustainability Conference in Rio to Avoid Climate Talk
Exposing the Green World Order
UN Plans $45 Trillion Cost for "Going Green"
Congress Probes “Green Energy” Loans, Wasted “Stimulus”
Socializing at Rio: Socialists Run the Earth Summit
Socialist International in Copenhagen: "Birth of Global Governance"
Former Obama Green Jobs Czar Works to Endow Earth with Human Rights
What are the UN's Agenda 21 and ICLEI?
Rockefellers Fund Global-warming Protests as Earth Cools
Your Hometown & the United Nations’ Agenda 21
From Rio to Copenhagen: The Earth Summit’s Legacy
County in Washington Ditches Sustainable Development
World Government: The UN Eco-Agenda for Planetary Control
UN Demands $76 Trillion for “Green Technology”
Sustainable Development Means a Wrenching Transformation of Your Life