UN Threatens to Trump US Land Policy

A Better Earth ^ | September 2004 | Cheryl K. Chumley

[Free2Be49]

UN Threatens to Trump US Land Policy

by Cheryl K. Chumley

September 2004

A Better Earth
 http://www.abetterearth.org/article.php/796.html

It’s a clash of the titans. On one side there are well-funded environmental groups and eco-lobbyists; on the other, free-market advocates and strict constitutional constructionists. But these are just the internal forces at play. At the global level, the United Nations is proposing a new treaty that holds potential to render moot US congressional decisions.

The outcome of this battle will determine whether the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (passed Jan. 12, 2001) should be amended to open the doors to timber harvesting on our nation’s federally protected lands. The Dept. of Agriculture’s Forest Service just extended the comment period on these suggested changes, from Sept. 14 to Nov. 15, but tying into the issue is an almost simultaneous proposal from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. This body wants to develop a “successor agreement” to its U.S.-backed International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA). If enacted, this agreement would require participating nations to abide by restrictive land management policies that will likely include blanket prohibitions on timber harvests. In effect, it could usurp conclusions reached at the congressional level regarding America’s forests.

As for the internal debate, these proposed changes can be seen as a nod to Tenth Amendment supporters, seeking to preserve states’ rights. President Clinton’s last-hour rule prohibited, with little exception, road construction and timber harvest on all federally protected forests nationwide. However, this new mandate seeks to reallocate a semblance of states’ rights by requiring governors to identify areas of desired preservation and, if there is a perceived need, request Forest Service intervention. The Forest Service, in turn, can decline to intervene. And it’s this aspect of the proposal - along with an interim directive draft provision giving regional foresters temporary authority to recommend “road construction, reconstruction or timber harvest projects in inventoried roadless areas,” - that have environmental groups in an uproar.

“The Bush administration’s announcement will immediately imperil wild forests across the country, leaving them vulnerable to commercial timber sales and road building,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope. “These wild forests are special places of national significance and need a national policy to ensure their proper management.”

Imperil? Here is yet another prediction of doom that is unlikely to be realized. Not only is it unlikely that regional foresters will suddenly give permission, en masse, to build roads or harvest all the available timber in all the nation’s protected forests, but it is also improbable that every governor would abstain completely from requesting the Feds to oversee land management policy – especially when such oversight often brings funding with it.

That logic aside, even the Green groups must admit that the sheer abundance of Roadless Rule court challenges in the past three years proves these Clinton-era prohibitions are on shaky legal ground, and the time for some sort of policy change has arrived.

This mandate offers states the ability to participate in the decision making process, which Clinton’s rule denied. “During the development of the roadless rule in 1999 and 2000, the governors of several western states requested cooperating agency status to work with the Forest Service in the development of … the roadless rule. These requests were all denied,” a Forest Service background paper reads. “Over the past several years the roadless rule has been the subject of nine lawsuits in federal district courts in Idaho, Utah, North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska and the District of Columbia.” This in itself would seem like a reasonable explanation as to why the administration is now attempting to fine-tune this rule.

However, because of recent developments at the global level, it seems that even if Congress passes these revisions, there may be little actual change. By 2005, the United Nations hopes to solidify its successor, the International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA), and that action could clamp whatever allowances are granted at the congressional level.

The ITTA, a U.N. measure the United States signed July 1, 1999, and accepted Nov. 14, 1996, created an organization that controls the world’s production (and consumption) of timber. The agreement, overseen and administered by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, labels nations as either timber producers or consumers and allots voting quotas based on levels of production versus consumption – with more voting weight granted to the former. The United States, a consumer, therefore does not possess the same ability to control - via ballot - the application of this agreement, as many of the producing nations do (e.g. Indonesia or Malaysia).

The agreement purports to establish a timber market that is not only “fair” to all nations, but supportive of sustainable development ideals – that is, the environment should take precedence over selfish corporate concerns. Ironically, it is the “selfish” North American timber industry that has been the most profound impetus for reforestation and management projects. In fact, the UN State of the World’s Forests Report (2002) stated that North American forests had increased by ten million hectares in the last ten years. Such statistics invite the question: why is the UN attempting to regulate US forestry?

The International Tropical Timber Agreement is not exactly a shining example of supply-side economics. But now UNCTD officials are planning to finalize an off-shoot of ITTA by 2005, and this new agreement, a sort of ITTA2, will place the global body in an even greater position of international oversight. So far, discussions on ITTA2’s role have included increasing the following: “political attention on forest governance,” “interest in monitoring and regulating the international trade,” and “interest in managing natural forests as ecosystems.”

Whatever chance states now have of reclaiming Tenth Amendment rights, and whatever opportunity timber companies might have to conduct business according to the American free-market principle, is likely short-lived. Given the UN’s regard for all-things environmental, it can be pretty much assumed that ITTA2 will favor retention of trees at all costs. And, should the United States accept this new UN agreement, one could assume that timber harvesting activities will become nonexistent within our federal forests, regardless of what emerges from this comment period as the will of Congress or the people.

Cheryl Chumley is a freelance writer in the Washington, DC area.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Creeping World Government, Coming Soon To A neighborhood Near You

[TLI]

Ironically, it is the “selfish” North American timber industry that has been the most profound impetus for reforestation and management projects. In fact, the UN State of the World’s Forests Report (2002) stated that North American forests had increased by ten million hectares in the last ten years. Such statistics invite the question: why is the UN attempting to regulate US forestry?

Damn good question. Further, what does the un think they will do if they "feel" we are not abiding? Move our forests somewhere else? The un needs to get it's worthless a$$ OUT of the U.S.

[SirLurkedalot]

Not that soon. We still have our guns.

[brityank]

The agreement [UN - ITTA] purports to establish a timber market that is not only “fair” to all nations, but supportive of sustainable development ideals – that is, the environment should take precedence over selfish corporate concerns. Ironically, it is the “selfish” North American timber industry that has been the most profound impetus for reforestation and management projects. In fact, the UN State of the World’s Forests Report (2002) stated that North American forests had increased by ten million hectares in the last ten years. Such statistics invite the question: why is the UN attempting to regulate US forestry?

Ping.

[brityank]

That last for you.

[Citizen Soldier]

Here, here....... time to kick those bastards out of our country!

[G.Mason]

My fervent desire is for the next four or eight years we (the federal government) begin to, and continue to, lock up these eco terrorists and their enablers.

Give them paper and pencil (w/ no eraser) so after they work at hard labor for twelve hours, 24/7, they may write their memoirs.

[nw_arizona_granny]

More UN takeover.

They own the politicians, rivers and parks and now they want
to make our laws, I call that a take over...........

clinton should be sent to live in a third world country, broke and hungry, then maybe he will see what he has cost this country, with his communistic plans.

[NetValue]

Just as we used to have freedom of the individual to use his/her property freely, we used to have national sovereignty to decide for ourselves what is best.

Stop paying into the UN. Get the UN out of the US.

[Adder]

"The agreement [UN - ITTA] purports to establish a timber market that is not only “fair” to all nations, but supportive of sustainable development ideals – that is, the environment should take precedence over selfish corporate concerns. Ironically, it is the “selfish” North American timber industry that has been the most profound impetus for reforestation and management projects. In fact, the UN State of the World’s Forests Report (2002) stated that North American forests had increased by ten million hectares in the last ten years. Such statistics invite the question: why is the UN attempting to regulate US forestry?"

So the "selfishness and greed" of our timber industry has lead to a net increase in timber, [ignore that that industry was dragged kicking and screaming to that position]
while in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brazil, forests are being lost at rates that are not sustainable and the UN wants to potentially tell us what we can do or not do?
Can we tell this body to leave? Can we ignore them? Each and every move they make is designed to cripple the US, to handicap this country, to defeat this country's success all while praying we will willingly accept it and support those decisions that are NOT in our best interests.
It seems so obvious and is frustrating that its not clear to more people.

[stocksthatgoup]

Time to send the UN and the Internationalists packing.

[Natural Law]

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

[dalebert]

The UN needs to go.

[sergeantdave]

while in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brazil, forests are being lost at rates that are not sustainable

---

Can you give us cites for that? Press releases from Greenpeace, RAN, Sierra Club, et al, don't count.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

Preserving the environment is not the UN's goal, the environment is the excuse that will allow control. With control UN officials and their partners can divvy up the excess profits that result form the elimination of competition.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[hedgetrimmer]

Preserving the environment is not the UN's goal

Agreed.

[B4Ranch]

>>Such statistics invite the question: why is the UN attempting to regulate US forestry?<<

To control WATER. That is the one and ONLY reason.

[B4Ranch]

#19
When Arnie turned control of 25 million acres over to the Sierra Conservancy a couple of days ago, he gave them control of 65% of Kalifornias water.