UN Biodiversity Conference Pushes Global Redistribution, Restriction, Regimentation
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

“Resource mobilization” and “capacity building” were two of the key terms that dominated the recently concluded United Nations “biodiversity” conference in Korea. “Resource mobilization,” as the reader may guess, refers to increasing government funding (i.e., increasing taxation) to support biodiversity programs and research. “Capacity building,” a favorite phrase at the UN, refers to foreign aid transfers from the developed to the lesser developed countries, which means either government-to-government or government-to-UN agency transfers of wealth.

The 12th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP12) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity closed on Friday, October 17, in Pyeongchang, Republic of Korea, calling for a doubling of “total biodiversity-related international financial resource flows to developing countries.” In addition to increasing direct foreign aid, this will mean a big increase in funding through the World Bank, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank and other UN-aligned regional development banks — all of which are funded by taxes extracted by member governments. Moreover, the conferees agreed that all governments should increase their domestic spending on biodiversity.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, also known as the UN Biodiversity Treaty) is one of the huge agreements that emerged from the UN’s 1992 Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, an enviro-socialist confab better known as the Earth Summit.

Other major documents to come out of the Rio summit are: the Convention on Climate Change; Agenda 21; the Convention to Combat Desertification; and the Forest Principles Consensus. President George H.W. Bush attended the Earth Summit and signed the Climate Change Convention, but did not sign the CBD. The United States and Andorra are the only two members of the United Nations that have not yet ratified the agreement.

For the past couple of decades the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has operated in the shadow of the UN global warming campaign, which has received the lion’s share of funding and media exposure. However, as we reported in 2012 during that year’s Rio+20 Earth Summit, the UN is moving its biodiversity effort to the frontline, as it accelerates its multi-pronged push using various environmental pretexts to empower itself as a global government.

According to an official press release from the biodiversity conference on October 17, a new “roadmap” was adopted to speed up implementation of the “biodiversity targets” set at Aichi, Japan in 2010. It states:

Key decisions, including those on resource mobilization, capacity building, scientific and technical cooperation linking biodiversity and poverty eradication, and on monitoring of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, form the “Pyeongchang roadmap for the enhanced implementation of the strategic plan and achievement of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.” These actions will strengthen capacity and increase support for countries and stakeholders to implement their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans.

“The decisions made at COP 12 here in Pyeongchang will leapfrog efforts to achieve the Aichi targets and put biodiversity on a stronger footing for decades to come,” declared UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme Achim Steiner. “The outcome of this meeting shows that plausible pathways exist to realize a reduction in biodiversity loss and in turn address broader global priorities in the context of the Post-2015 development agenda,” he continued.

The “Post-2015 development agenda” to which Steiner referred is the replacement for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, its global wealth redistribution program disguised as “aid to the poor,” which was hatched at the UN’s Millennium Summit in 2000. The UN General Assembly is working on its “Sustainable Development Goals” to replace the Millennium Development Goals next year.

Most of the news reports on the conference that have mentioned the development goals have spoken only of the two major proposals: for conservation of terrestrial and marine plant and animal species. Since that includes the entire surface of the planet, the potential for havoc by government-run-amok is already very great; but there is much more that has not been reported. Guidance for the much of the biodiversity process is being provided by a new report issued at the 3-week-long Pyeongchang conference, entitled Global Biodiversity Outlook 4. It is subtitled: “mid-term assessment of progress towards the implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020.”

Among other things, Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 indicates that the UN’s broad view of biodiversity encompasses virtually all activities and areas of human society: food, nutrition, health, agriculture, water, sanitation, and much more. It states (page 142):

The Open Working Group (OWG), established by the General Assembly to prepare a proposal

on the sustainable development goals proposes 17 such goals, each supported by targets specifying outcomes and means of implementation. Two of the proposed goals address, respectively biodiversity in marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and the proposed targets under these goals draw heavily on several of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. Biodiversity and ecosystems are also reflected under other proposed goals, notably those on food, nutrition and agriculture and on water and sanitation.
Biodiversity is also important for the proposed goals on poverty eradication, health, settlements,
disaster risk reduction and climate change, and references therein could be strengthened. The need for sustainable consumption and production is also reflected in the proposed goals as is more equitable access to natural resources. Notably, the proposed text calls for the integration of biodiversity values into national and local planning, development processes and poverty reduction strategies and accounts. The text also calls for enhanced policy coherence for sustainable development and the development of measurements of progress on sustainable development that complement GDP. It is expected that the SDGs will be finalized by the United Nations in 2015 as part of the post-2015 development agenda.

Many observers may be surprised to learn that the world planners at the UN are defining biodiversity in ways that justify empowering governments to run roughshod over virtually everything. However, there should be no surprise, since that clearly was the plan from the start. As mentioned above, the CBD is one of the revolutionary documents to be birthed at the 1992 Earth summit. It is an integral component of Agenda 21 (the UN Agenda for the 21st Century), the magnum opus released that year at Rio, and signed by President Bush (Senior).

Chapter 15 of Agenda 21, entitled, “Conservation of Biological Diversity,” begins with these two paragraphs:

15.1. The objectives and activities in this chapter of Agenda 21 are intended to improve the conservation of biological diversity and the sustainable use of biological resources, as well as to support the Convention on Biological Diversity.

15.2. Our planet’s essential goods and services depend on the variety and variability of genes, species, and ecosystems. Biological resources feed and clothe us and provide housing, medicines and spiritual nourishment. The natural ecosystems of forests, savannahs, pastures and rangelands, deserts, tundras, rivers, lakes and seas contain most of the Earth’s biodiversity. Farmers’ fields and gardens are also of great importance as repositories, while gene banks, botanical gardens, zoos and other germplasm repositories make a small but significant contribution. The current decline in biodiversity is largely the result of human activity and represents a serious threat to human development.

As we reported in a 2011 article entitled, “Your Hometown & the United Nations’ Agenda 21,” the most accessible version of Agenda 21 to come out following the Rio summit was published under the title AGENDA 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet (Earthpress, 1993). It was edited by environmental-activist attorney Daniel Sitarz and enthusiastically endorsed by Earth Summit chief Maurice Strong. Sitarz’s high praise for Agenda 21, will, for any freedom-minded individual, serve as a damning indictment of the UN plan’s totalitarian ambitions. Sitarz rhapsodically states:

AGENDA 21 proposes an array of actions which are intended to be implemented by every person on Earth…. It calls for specific changes in the activities of all people….Effective execution of AGENDA 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced — a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.

A “profound reorientation of all human society.” Required activities for “every person on Earth.” As we noted, “The tyrannical implications are so stunningly transparent that it seems impossible that any nation not overtly communist could endorse it. Yet it was unanimously endorsed by every nation at the summit, including the United States. Not even Stalin, Hitler, or Mao came close to proposing anything this all-intrusive and all-encompassing.”

The Convention on Biological Diversity and Agenda 21 are but two of the overt UN grabs for total global control which include: the Law of the Sea Treaty, the International Criminal Court, the Small Arms Treaty, Internet Governance, Convention on the Rights of the Child, and many more. All of which provide ample reason to Get US out of the United Nations, as The John Birch Society has wisely and courageously urged for five decades.

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