SPECIAL REPORT: PART I Agenda 21: Swallowing America · 2013-12-02 · Agenda 21 because they know...

30 • RANGE MAGAZINE • WINTER 2014

Since the ’90s, the United Nations’Agenda 21 has been implementednationwide at the federal, state and

local levels, with very few people even beingaware of it. It is dangerous because it destroysthe most important civil liberty we have—private property rights.

Most Americans have read or heard ofone or more federally funded programs pro-moting “sustainability.” Few citizens, howev-er, know these programs are based on amajor U.N. program called Agenda 21,which is buried in smoke and disinforma-tion generated by the government and itspartners in the media. This U.N. program isvery dangerous to our personal liberties andthe stealth with which Agenda 21 has beenimplemented should concern everyone.

The Miracle of a Great NationWealth creation and liberty are impossiblewithout legally protected private propertyrights—which are the cornerstone of allother liberties. This is why Agenda 21 takesdirect aim at eliminating them. This criticallyimportant principle is no longer beingtaught in public schools, but was well-knownto our Founders. James Madison wrote:“Government is instituted to protect propertyof every sort; as well as that which lies in thevarious rights of individuals…this being theend of government, that alone is a just govern-ment, which impartially secures, to every man,whatever is his own.”

This may sound crazy if you are less than50 years old and educated in the publicschool system. For more than 60 years, theeducation change artists have successfullyremoved any hint of this all-important prin-ciple. Yet it was widely known and under-stood by all colonists as the primaryprinciple of “whoever owns the propertyowns the people depending on it to live.”Wayne Hage, a Nevada rancher who success-fully fought a major property rights case inthe U.S. Court of Claims during the 1990sand 2000s, made the concept even simpler:

SPECIAL REPORT: PART I

Agenda 21: Swallowing America If you remember, “We have to pass the bill [Obamacare] in order to know what’s in it,” you will know

that America’s weak leaders are using federal bribes to do the same thing with the United Nations’ Agenda 21.

By Michael S. Coffman, Ph.D.

Oh, the bounty! A 60-year-old poster extols the Soviet experiment with communal agriculture whichwas central to the Communist plan and possibly the most tragic failure in modern history. Millionsneedlessly starved to death while Soviet bureaucrats drank French wine produced on private property.The United Nations wants the developed world to try that again—especially the United States.

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“If you don’t have the right to own and con-trol property, then you are property.”

With the exceptions of safety, harm andnuisance restrictions, property rights werethe backbone of U.S. law until the mid-20thcentury. It allowed the creation of a powerfulmiddle class and their ability to create wealththat benefited all people. This was unheard ofuntil the late 1500s when Sir Edward Cokewrote that all men should have the right toown legally protected property. Sir Edwardthen established an independent judiciary inEngland that brought those rights laid downin the Magna Carta to the common man.Those rights provided the driving force forexpansion of the British Empire and, morerecently, the United States.

In the late 1990s, the World Bank com-missioned a global study to determine whycapitalism failed so miserably in the formercommunist and developing nations but suc-ceeded in the West. The results are presentedin a stunning book, “The Mystery of Capi-tal,” by Peruvian Hernando de Soto, presi-dent of the Institute for Liberty andDemocracy. De Soto found that the com-mon denominator underlying every failurearound the world was the lack of easilyobtained and inexpensive legal title to prop-erty. The process is simple to understand.Capital is required to start, expand or buy abusiness. In more than 70 percent of cases,that capital is obtained by using the equity inland, homes, stocks and other assets ownedby an individual. Without title to that prop-erty, there is no way to secure an equity loan.

The effect is enormous. The wealth of anation can be found in a simple graph of percapita gross domestic product (GDP) overan index of private property. The index oflegal property rights accounts for 74 percentof all variation of per capita GDP. Westernnations have varying degrees of formal prop-erty rights; the communist and former com-munist nations do not, or have only recentlybegun to obtain them. The World Banknoted at the time: “While the concept seemssimple, very few property owners actually holdofficial government-licensed titles outside theUnited States, Canada, Australia, WesternEurope, and Japan. De Soto estimates thatnearly five billion people are legally and eco-nomically disenfranchised by their own gov -ernments. Since these people do not have accessto a comprehensive legal property system, theycannot leverage their assets to produce addi-tional wealth. They are left with what De Sotocalls dead capital.”

Agenda 21 Destroys Private Property RightsAny infringement of private property rightsbeyond “harm and safety” can have a hugenegative impact on liberty and wealth cre-ation. As mentioned above, Agenda 21 can-not be implemented without destroyingprivate property rights, yet that is what theUnited Nations unequivocally states must bedone. At the Habitat I Conference in Van-couver, British Columbia, in 1976, a U.N.document stated: “Land...cannot be treated asan ordinary asset, controlled by individualsand subject to the pressures and inefficiencies ofthe market. Private land ownership is also aprincipal instrument of accumulation andconcentration of wealth and therefore con-tributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it maybecome a major obstacle in the planning andimplementation of development schemes. Theprovision of decent dwellings and healthy con-ditions for the people can only be achieved ifland is used in the interests of society as awhole. Public control of land use is thereforeindispensable.”

The United Nations has it backwards.Like so many “noble” schemes socialists andprogressives implement to help the poor orsave the environment, their policies accom-plish exactly the opposite. European green

energy, another Agenda 21 folly, has turnedinto a disaster and shown that green policieswere disconnected from reality from thestart. (See “The Disconnect,” Fall 2013, atwww.rangemagazine.com.)

Money is one of our private propertyrights. By taxing citizens to fund an ideologi-cal boondoggle in green energy, the govern-

ment is stealing from its citizens, therebydenying them the ability to use their proper-ty in a way that can create wealth. The entireeconomy falls into a bureaucratic malaise—exactly what has happened in Europe forover 100 years and more recently happenedin the United States thanks to all presidentsexcept Reagan, especially Carter and Obama.

People in impoverished nations are

The basis of wealth creation for every nation is legally protected private property rights. The better thelegal protection, the greater the wealth of the nation. SOURCE: James Gwartney and Robert Lawson, fromEconomic Freedom of the World - 2005 Annual Report, Fraser Institute, 2005. http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=pb&id=789 and CIA World Fact Book. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html.

Sir Edward Cokechanged the MagnaCarta in the 1500sto allow thecommon man toown legallyprotected property.Those rightsprovided the drivingforce for expansionof the BritishEmpire and, morerecently, the UnitedStates.

Property Legal Protection Index and GDP per Capita



locked into poverty. Meanwhile, the incomeof the middle class in rich nations will grad-ually diminish, especially as income redistri-bution sucks the life out of those whoproduce and gives it to those who don’t.Agenda 21 and sustainable development,accompanied by an ocean of ignorance, isthe perfect vehicle to accomplish transferringproperty rights from the people to the gov-ernment—all under the guise of bringingprosperity.

What is Agenda 21?In its introduction, Agenda 21 claims to be “acomprehensive blueprint for action to betaken globally, from now into the 21st centu-ry.” The U.N. ambition was high, and sowere its stated goals: improving the livingstandards of those in need; to better manageand protect the ecosystem; and to bringabout a more prosperous future for all.Despite its noble propaganda, many peopleof both political parties strongly opposeAgenda 21 because they know it can neveraccomplish prosperity and livability. Theyalso know that agenda-driven bureaucratscan never create a dynamic, vibrant econo-my that creates jobs.

Stunning in its magnitude, Agenda 21covers everything from human pop ulationto urban development, global warming,destruction of biodiversity, women’s rights,and much, much more. (See sidebar.)Although it has no enforcement ability, itsexisting and proposed enforce ment treatieswill eventually provide a web of interlockinginternational laws that would regulate virtu-ally every aspect of human inter actions witheach other and the environment. Until then,the executive branch is going around Con-gress to make policy changes that imp lementit piecemeal.

The IUCNThe International Union for the Conserva-tion of Nature is a nongovernmental organi-zation that allegedly serves as a scientificadvisor to the United Nations. It has morethan 880 state and federal governmentagency and nongovern mental organization(NGO) mem bers in 133 countries. Federalmembers include the U.S. Department ofState, Commerce, U.S. Forest Service, U.S.Fish & Wildlife Service, National Park Ser-vice, the Envir onmental Protection Agency(EPA), and others.

Since the 1970s, these federal agenciescollaborated with the majority of environ-mental organ izations in the United Statesbehind closed doors to craft treaties anddevelop policies they, not Congress, believethe United States should implement. Thisunholy alliance between federal agenciesand special interest groups is against thelaw, but Congress has shown no interest instopping it.

As members of the IUCN that devel opedAgenda 21, these federal agencies began toprepare implementation of Agenda 21 asearly as 1993 when an EPA internal workingdocument laid out the plan: “Naturalresource and environmental agencies...should...develop a joint strategy to help theUnited States fulfill its existing internationalobligations [e.g., Convention on BiologicalDiversity, Agenda 21]. The executive branchshould direct federal agencies to evaluatenational policies...in light of internationalpolices and obligations, and to amendnational policies to achieve internationalobjectives.” (Boldface added)

The Convention on Biological Diversityhas never been an “existing internationalobligation” because it was never ratified bythe Senate. This author plus three othersstopped its ratification an hour before thescheduled cloture vote for the treaty. Moreimportantly, nowhere in the U.S. Constitu-tion does it allow federal bureaucrats to“amend national policies to achieve interna-tional objectives.” But that is exactly whathappened. President Obama has made thisapproach to policy formulation the keystoneof his admin istration today under the redherring that he “can’t wait for Congress totake action.” This is pure lawlessness andshould alarm all citizens. But it hasn’t.

Secretive Agenda 21Meanwhile, Agenda 21 was being imple-mented in the United States by stealththrough a new anti-property rights federalpolicy called Sustainable America, publishedby the Clinton administration in 1996.Birthed in June 1993 when Clinton createdthe President’s Council on SustainableDevelopment, it was no accident that half its25 members also belonged to the IUCN. Thelatter guided the process from start to finishin near secrecy and the PCSD’s purpose was“to begin translating the vision of Agenda 21into U.S. action.” Once Sustainable Americawas completed, it was broken into seven sub-documents: (1) Eco-Efficiency; (2) Energy

How Agenda 21 got into your backyard: the IUCN helped write the U.N. Agenda 21 signed by PresidentBush at the 1992 Earth Summit. The IUCN also dominated President Clinton’s President’s Council onSustainable Development from 1993 to 1999. The PCSD published “Sustainable America” in 1996,along with seven subdocuments, with goals that were quietly promoted by all federal agencies whichworked through the U.S. Council of Mayors and the National Association of Counties. The agenciesprovided grants to state and local governments. These grants are linked back to Sustainable America andultimately to Agenda 21 with almost no one knowing it.

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and Transportation; (3) Population andConsumption; (4) Public Linkage, Dialogue,and Education; (5) Sustainable Agriculture;(6) Sustainable Communities; and (7) Nat-ural Resources.Members of the PCSD, in its document,

“Toward a Sustainable America,” urged everyfederal agency to immediately begin imple-menting Agenda 21:“Upon receiving thereport, the president asked us [the PCSD] tobegin implementing our re com mendations.Among our first actions, the Council worked inpartnership with the federal gov ernment tosupport the efforts of the U.S. Conference ofMayors and the National Assoc iation of Coun-ties as they created the Joint Center for Sustain-able Communities in 1996.”Without the name Agenda 21 or Sustain-

able America even being mentioned, pro-grams with sizable cash grants wereannounced to local governments. Each onewas heavily promoted using the theme ofbecoming more “prosperous and desirableplaces to live.” The American Planning Asso-ciation and the International Council forLocal Environmental Initiatives had dozensof templates and manpower to help cash-strapped communities “plan” for the 21stcentury.These local government officials were

happy to take the money and had no under -standing of what was happening to them, orcared that they were implementing Sustain-able America and Agenda 21. When con-cerned citizens accused elected officials ofimplementing Agenda 21, they couldadamantly say they were not, because theyreally didn’t know they were.Since the 1990s, most, if not all, planning

grants from any federal agency have beenlinked back to Sustainable America andAgenda 21. They are always wrapped inmotherhood-and-apple-pie rhetoric likeprosperity, livability and environmental har-mony, but in fact they transfer private prop-erty rights to the government. If the plan is regional, the regional body

(made up of bureaucrats and nongovern-mental environmental organizations) setspriorities and policy and is almost neveraccountable to the citizens because membersare not elected by those citizens. At the sametime, the elected local government officialsno longer have control over what happens intheir community, they will only have onerepresentative on a regional council of 10 to20 members and the council can prettymuch do what it wants while remaining

unaccountable to the citizens over whom ithas authority to do and enforce almost any-thing it dreams up and implements.The strategy used to implement Agenda

21 in the United States through SustainableAmerica can only be classified as a diabolicalway to strip American citizens of their prop-erty rights and liberty. Don’t expect Congressto do anything because it is controlled byprogressives on both sides of the aisle whoagree with this absolute control. It is time toexpose and stop it community by communi-ty across America. ■�

Dr. Michael Coffman is president of Environ-mental Perspectives Incorporated (epi-us.com)and CEO of Sovereignty International (sover-eigntyinternational.org). He has had more

than 40 years of university teaching, researchand consulting experience in forestry andenvironmental sciences and now geopolitics.He has led a multimillion-dollar researcheffort on climate change and was one of fourwho stopped the ratification of the U.N.Convention on Biological Diversity one hourbefore the Senate cloture vote. He hasauthored numerous books and videos, the twonewest being “Plundered: How ProgressiveIdeology Is Destroying America” and “RadicalIslam in the House.” Both books can be foundat AmericaPlundered.com. He can be reachedat 207-945-9878 or [email protected].

See Special Report: Part II“Implementation by Stealth,” on next page.

MARCHING TOWARD TYRANNY

Agenda 21 is a 40-chapter document to control human activity. Its goals cover “social and economic dimensions,” “conservation and management of resources fordevelopment,” “strengthening the role of major groups,” and “how to implement.”Here are some of the goals and highlights:

International cooperation to accelerate sustainable development in developing countries and related domestic policies. ■ Combating poverty. ■ Changing consumption patterns. ■ Demographic dynamics and sustainability. ■ Protecting and promoting human healthconditions. ■ Promoting sustainable human settlement development. ■ Integrating environ-ment and development in decision-making. ■ Protection of the atmosphere. ■ Integratedapproach to the planning and management of land resources. ■ Combating deforestation. ■ Managing fragile ecosystems: combating desertification and drought. ■ Managing fragileecosystems: sustainable mountain development. ■ Promoting sustainable agriculture andrural development. ■ Conservation of biological diversity. ■ Environmentally sound man-agement of biotechnology. ■ Protection of the oceans, all kinds of seas, including enclosed andsemi-enclosed seas, and coastal areas and the protection, rational use and development oftheir living resources. ■ Protection of the quality and supply of freshwater resources: application of integrated approaches to the development, management and use of water. ■ Environmentally sound management of toxic chemicals, including prevention of illegalinternational traffic in toxic and dangerous products. ■ Environmentally sound manage-ment of hazardous wastes. ■ Environmentally sound management of solid wastes andsewage-related issues. ■ Safe and environmentally sound management of radioactive wastes.■ Global action for women towards sustainable and equitable development. ■ Children andyouth in sustainable development. ■ Recognizing and strengthening the role of indigenouspeople and their communities. ■ Strengthening the role of nongovernmental organizations:partners for sustainable development. ■ Local authorities’ initiatives in support of Agenda21. ■ Strengthening the role of workers and their trade unions. ■ Strengthening the role ofbusiness and industry. ■ Scientific and technological community. ■ Strengthening the role offarmers. ■ Financing sustainable development. ■ Technology transfer. ■ Science for sustain-able development. ■ Education, public awareness and training. ■ Capacity building in developing countries. ■ International institutions. ■ International legal instruments. ■ Information for decision-making.

Nice ideas, if you don’t care about private property rights and personal liberty.



The federal agencies…express a verydifferent view of property rights,” saysBob Solari, county commissioner of

Indian River County in Florida. “In short,they believe that property ought to be usedin ways consistent with its best use for thecollective. Indian River residents still believethat while understanding and appreciatingthe needs of the community, it is the individ-ual who should, in the final analysis, deter-mine what is in the best use of her property.”

Agenda 21 is spreading across Americalike wildfire. It is deeply entrenched withinfederal agencies and increasingly in state andlocal agencies and departments. It uses taxdollars to implement “sustainable” federalprograms locally that destroy private proper-ty rights. Very few of the elected officialsembracing the tenets of Agenda 21 and its

U.S. enabling policy, Sustainable America,know they are actually implementing aninternational agenda.

Past articles in RANGE have discussedmany aspects of Agenda 21 schemes such asthe global warming/green energy and biodi-versity debacles. President Obama is dog -matically and recklessly determined todestroy America’s economy by forcing Amer-icans to use the same failed green-energypolicies that are destroying Europe. (See“The Disconnect,” RANGE, Fall 2013.) Simi-larly, millions of acres are being regulated outof human use to satisfy a pantheistic beliefthat nature is god and her biodiversity mustbe protected at all costs. (See “Watch Out” atwww.rangemagazine.com/Winter 2011.)

Global warming (or climate change) andbiodiversity are but two chapters of 40 in

Agenda 21. (See sidebar on page 33.) Otherchapter themes also have a huge impact onAmerica.

Smart Growth PlusSmart growth/comprehensive planning andwatershed management seek to preserveland in a natural or agricultural state bypacking people into denser commun ities.The problem is that smart growth does noneof the things it’s alleged to do and it actuallyaccelerates the ills it is supposed to cure.

For one thing, land-use zoning has a dev-as tating impact on the cost of land. The Har-vard Institute of Economic Research showedthat city zoning dramatically increases thecost of land in urban areas using compre-hensive planning ordin ances. Its study foundthat in cities employing smart growth andcomprehensive planning, real estate costs fora quarter-acre lot skyrocketed by hundredsof thous ands of dollars. “In these areas,” thestudy claims, “only a small percentage of thevalue of the lot comes from an intrinsicallyhigh land price; the rest is due to restrictionson construction.”

Another in-depth study by RandalO’Toole published in “The Planning Penal-ty” found that, in 2005, smart growth andother land-use restrictions cost U.S. home-buyers at least $275 billion. Almost all the124 metropolitan areas experiencing afford-ability problems in that year were directlycaused by comprehensive planning andsmart growth. Most enlightening, the reportfound that “more than 30 percent of thetotal value of homes in this country is attrib-utable to prices inflated by planning-inducedhousing shortages.” This contributed to thewild increases and speculation in housingprices from 2000 to 2006, which inevitablyled to the housing crash between 2007 and2012, and the financial crash of 2008.

These are only two of many studies thathave shown smart growth is a fraud andanything but smart.

Florida’s Seven/50 planThe Seven/50 plan is supposed to be “a blue-print for ensuring economic prosperity and

SPECIAL REPORT: PART IIImplementation by Stealth

How Agenda 21 works. By Michael S. Coffman, Ph.D.

The southeastern Florida Seven/50 plan, funded by federal grants, claims it has nothing to do withAgenda 21, yet it is a cookie-cutter example of thousands of similar plans across America that are rightout of the Agenda 21/Sustainable America playbook. SOURCE: http://seven50.org/.



the best-possible quality of life for southeastFlorida.” It is a 50-year plan for seven coun-ties that gushes with emotion-laden sloganslike “leverage resources,” “drive competitive-ness and prosperity,” “greater opportunities,”“sustained job creation,” “open space,” “trans-portation options,” “environment-friendly,”ad nauseam.

As with the thousands of other efforts toimplement Agenda 21/Sustainable Americaacross the United States, the process startswith a federal grant or grants. In this case itwas from the federal Sustainable Communi-ties Program of U.S. Housing and UrbanDevelopment, Environmental ProtectionAgency, and the U.S. Department of Trans-portation. The $4.25 million grant for theSeven/50 plan sets up a nonelected regionalcouncil made up of a federal/state manage-ment team and an executive committeecomprising nonelected people from withinthe community.

In other cases across the nation, thecouncil may have one commissioner (orequivalent) from each county or city council.In any event, the council is not accountableto the people who will have to submit to theplans and pay the supporting tax dollars tofund the council’s sustainability plans.

A series of workshops are held in differ-ent areas, allegedly to get input from citizens.However, the workshop conclusions are setin advance using the Delphi technique toherd citizens to a predetermined outcome.

The first step is to get citizens to form a“vision” of what they would like to have theircommunity look like in 25, 30, or, in thiscase, 50 years.

The attendees of the workshops are splitup into breakout groups of citizens, govern-ment (federal and state) officials, and projectsupporters. Each group goes through a set ofpictures—one aesthetically pleasing matchedwith a drab, uninviting one. The pleasing

picture is invariably picked by the group. Ofcourse the only way the regional governmentcould ever hope to accomplish this vision isby controlling everyone’s property rights.

Commissioner Bob Solari wrote ascathing letter to the executive director of theTreasure Coast Regional Planning Council,which sponsored the Seven/50 plan. In it hecharged that citizens felt manipulated and“that the entire exercise was simply anattempt to justify the already arrived-at deci-sions.” At no time “was there [any] discussionof cost to the community.” It was obvious theworkshop organizers had “no knowledge ofour local community” and that the goals ofthe plan “are often the antithesis of the val-ues, goals and objectives of the majority ofthe citizens of Indian River County.... Theprocess was driven by the federal govern-ment.”

National Blueways SystemAnother Agenda 21/Sustainable Americaprogram is the National Blueways System, apart of President Obama’s America’s GreatOutdoors initiative. Created by former Secre-tary of Interior Ken Salazar on May 24, 2012,the National Blueways System joins waterand land together for protection of entire

watersheds covering multiple states. It inte-grates the smart growth/comprehensiveplanning/biodiversity goals of Agenda 21, aswell as its freshwater and integrated manage-ment. All wisdom, it seems, flows fromWashington, D.C.

Past Federal EffortsPresident Clinton attempted to implementsimilar programs in the mid-1990s, includ-ing the American Heritage Rivers Initiative(AHRI) and the Interior Columbia BasinEcosystem Management Project (ICBEMP).The AHRI’s objectives were environmentalprotection, economic revitalization, and his-toric and cultural preservation—the same asall Agenda 21/Sustainable America goals, butbecause of negative citizen feedback, it nevergot off the ground.

ICBEMP was birthed in 1993 and coor-dinated by the U.S. Forest Service (FS) andBureau of Land Management (BLM). Itattempted to swallow up the entire InteriorColumbia River Basin and is the biggesteffort to date, encompassing 145 millionacres that included most of Washington,Oregon and Idaho as well as portions ofMontana, Wyoming and Utah. Althoughpeople rejected ICBEMP in 1997, the project

“The moment the idea isadmitted into society, thatproperty is not as sacredas the laws of God, and

that there is not a force oflaw and public justice toprotect it, anarchy andtyranny commence.”

—JOHN ADAMS, 1787

Urban growth boundary in Portland, Ore. Land inside the boundary increases in value by as much as20 times (inset) because developable land becomes artific ially scarce while land on the other side cannever be developed, denying the farmer any chance at realizing increased value. It opens the door tocorruption if speculators can pay off the planner to learn where the line will be drawn; they can thenpurchase the land at above market prices and still get fabulously rich. This is found in almost all Agenda21/Sustainable America plans. SOURCE: Google Earth



never died and lived on with insidious malig-nancy like latent cancer cells. It quietly beganto metastasize again when the FS, BLM, U.S.Fish & Wildlife Service, the National MarineFisheries Service, and the EPA quietly signeda Memorandum of Understanding in Janu-ary 2008. The plan was to gradually imple-ment it regardless of citizens’ objections,beginning with federal lands.

Blueways GoalsNot surprisingly, the National Blueways pro-gram goals overlap with those of AHRI andICBEMP: “Establish a program to recognizeriver systems conserved through diverse stake-holder partnerships that use a comprehensivewatershed approach to resource stewardship.River systems designated as a National Blue-way shall collectively constitute a NationalBlueways System. The National Blueways Sys-tem will provide a new national emphasis onthe unique value and significance of a head-waters-to-mouth approach to river man-agement and create a mechanism toencourage stakeholders to integrate their landand water stewardship efforts by adopting awatershed approach.” [Boldface added foremphasis]

Like the rest of the Agenda 21/Sustain-able America ideas, the concept qualifies formotherhood-and-apple-pie status. Yet, likeall other federal programs based on Sustain-able America, it must destroy private proper-

ty rights to succeed. After all, to be “compre-hensive,” the federal government must havethe power to force landowners into a verysmall box of land-use alternatives that pro-tect the watershed and its values for everyonebut the landowner.

The program allows a nonelected groupof stakeholders, made up mostly of nonelect-ed bureaucrats and nongovernmental envi-ronmental organizations, to set priorities andpolicy. Many if not most of these stakehold-ers do not live in the watershed itself, yetclaim the right to say what landowners cando with their land. And, as with all regionalgovernance resulting from SustainableAmerica programs, there may be the tokenrepresentation of a county commissioner orcity councilman to give the appearance ofaccountability to taxpayers.

The National Blueways program hasbeen billed to the public as “voluntary.” How-ever, like so many other things that the feder-al government does not have constitutionalauthority to do, it entices the states intodoing what the federal program dictates byoffering huge financial grants. Even conserv-atives cannot refuse huge amounts of moneydancing before their eyes.

The danger once the program is imple-mented is that grants for human infrastruc-ture and sustainable programs can be offeredto urban areas while grants for, say, highwaymaintenance and new highways are no

longer offered to suburban or rural areas.Only nature-based improvements are fund-ed in these areas. And since human infra-structure improvements must be made tomaintain economic prosperity, the theorygoes that rural and suburban populationswill get discouraged and move into town.

The ability to control state and local gov-ernments with this feudallike power is exact-ly why the Founding Fathers restricted thefederal government to 18 enumerated pow-ers in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution—none of which were remotely related toland-use management.

By mid-2013, only two watersheds hadbeen nominated as a blueway. The first is the410-mile Connecticut River Basin thatincludes 7.2 million acres of Vermont, NewHampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut.The second is the 722-mile White RiverBasin that includes 17.8 million acres insouthern Missouri and much of Arkansas. Aswith all Sustainable America programs, theypromise prosperity and enhanced livability.Since private property rights are the founda-tion to wealth creation (see Part I), increasedprosperity and livability cannot happen ifprivate property rights are denied. Manymore river basins are undergoing—or willundergo—similar National Blueways pro-gram nomination unless this destructiveprogram is stopped.

White River BluewayDerailed?On June 26, 2013, the Arkansas Legislatureand state agencies suddenly agreed to with-draw from the National Blueways System.No public hearings had been held prior to orafter the designation of the White RiverBasin National Blueways program on Jan. 6,2013. Neither the Arkansas and Missouristate legislatures nor the affected countieswere ever informed of the designation. Con-servative action groups found out about it inMay. Following a meeting with grass rootson May 30 in St. Louis with this author andTom DeWeese of the American Policy Cen-ter, a herculean effort was launched toinform all affected counties within the WhiteRiver Basin. The deadline in which all com-ments on the designation had to be in wasthought to be July 5.

During the next two weeks, the dangersof the National Blueways program wereexplained to nearly half the county commis-sioners at their normal business meetings. Ofthis half, almost all counties in both states

The goals of the 1993 Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project are the same as theNational Blueways program today. It is the largest effort to date, occupying some 145 million acres in sixstates. Although citizens derailed it in 1997, it was reactivated in 2008 by federal agencies. MAP SOURCE: USGS



passed resolutions strongly opposing thedesignation. The resolutions caused a politi-cal firestorm and Arkansas legislators calledfor a June 26, 2013, hearing. This author wasasked to testify by Secure Arkansas, one ofthe most active conservative grassrootsgroups in the state. Unknown at the time, thefirestorm led the Arkansas agencies—per-haps on order from Democratic Gov. MikeBeebe—to withdraw from the NationalBlueways program.

The agency heads were first to testify atthe hearing on May 26, 2013. One by oneeach painfully announced his/her withdraw-al and the involved federal agencies regretful-ly accepted the withdrawals. The hundred or

so grassroots citizens were ecstatic.Perhaps the most encouraging part of

the Arkansas hearing were the penetratingquestions asked by the legislators of theheads of state agencies on how the pro-gram would not affect private propertyrights. After all, the National Blueways pro-gram explanation repeatedly used thewords “protect” or “restore” back to origi-nal conditions, or to “manage” some fea-ture to a desired condition, and muchmore. With verbiage like that, many legisla-tors embarrassed the agency heads by ask-ing how they thought this program couldever be “voluntary.”

The Arkansas experience should provide

hope for other grassroots groups which willexpose and defeat the Sustainable Americaprograms across the United States. So far,more than 150 communities have been suc-cessful in throwing out the InternationalCouncil for Local Environmental Initiativesor Agenda 21 from their state or local gov-ernments. Even so, the regional/comprehen-sive/smart growth zoning that is already inplace must be reversed and zoning that doesnot violate the property rights of citizensmust be reinstated. To do any of these thingsrequires that candidates are elected who sup-port private property rights.

Perhaps it’s time to think about runningfor office yourself. ■

By mid-2013, only two watersheds had been nominated in the National Blueways program. The first is the 410-mile Connecticut River Basin (left) thatincludes 7.2 million acres of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut. The second is the 722-mile White River Basin that includes 17.8 million acres in southern Missouri and much of Arkansas.

“The federal agencies...express a very different view of property rights. In shortthey believe that property ought to be used in ways consistent with its best use

for the collective. Indian River residents still believe that while understanding andappreciating the needs of the community, it is the individual who should, in the

final analysis, determine what is in the best use of her property.”—BOB SOLARI, COUNTY COMMISSIONER, INDIAN RIVER COUNTY, FLORIDA


SPECIAL REPORT: PART I Agenda 21: Swallowing America · 2013-12-02 · Agenda 21 because they know...

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