March/April, 1995

Table of Contents

About this edition...

The importance of the Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA) cannot be over-stated. It is the document, required by Article 25 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, that is to become the basis for the Global Environmental Agenda (GEA). The GEA is already being implemented throughout the world, including America, even though the treaty has not been ratified by the Senate.

We have "obtained" five of the 12 sections of the GBA in the "peer-review" process. The final document is scheduled for publication in July, 1995. The five sections reveal the magnitude of the Global Environmental Agenda. It is overwhelming. It overarches governments, law, institutions, and ideology to impose a system of belief and behavior that is incompatible with modern life.

The concept of private property rights, for example, must be replaced with the concept of "communal ownership" of all resources - including land. As much as 50% of the total land area must be returned to "Wildlands." Air-conditioning, suburban housing, and fossil-fuel-burning motors must be eliminated. And much, much, more.

These bizarre ideas are no longer the rantings of the lunatic fringe of the environmental movement. These ideas are explicitly stated in the documents that will become the official authority for the 34 international organizations that are now implementing the Global Environmental Agenda. (See page 29).

Treaty Implementation without Treaty Ratification

By Henry Lamb

The U.S. Senate failed to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity (Biodiversity Treaty) in the 103rd Congress. The treaty requires the Conference of the Parties to conduct a "Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA)." It also requires that participating nations create a system of protected areas. Both activities were initiated before the treaty was even presented to the delegates at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 1992. The treaty did not become international law until it was ratified by 30 nations in December of 1993. The U.S. Senate did not ratify the treaty during the 103rd Congress, and it is not likely to be considered by the 104th Congress.

The GBA is nearing completion, scheduled for release in June/July, 1995, and implementation of its provisions, specifically, a system of protected areas in the United States, has been underway since early 1992.

Four of 12 sections of the GBA were "intercepted" during the drafting process. Section 10.4.2.1.2 sets forth the criteria for protected areas: "...representative areas of all major ecosystems in a region need to be reserved, blocks should be as large as possible, buffer zones should be established around core areas, and corridors should connect these areas. This basic design is central to the recently proposed `Wildlands Project' in the United States."

In early 1992, the Greater Ecosystem Alliance (GEA) launched its "Regional Biodiversity Initiative in the Columbia Mountains," a 75,000 square mile (50 million acres) transboundary area reaching from British Columbia into the northwestern states. The GEA is a not-for-profit environmental organization created in 1988. Its advisory board includes Reed F. Noss, author of the "Wildlands Project," and Dave Foreman, in whose publication, Wild Earth, the "Wildlands Project" was published and widely distributed (75,000 copies) in 1992.

(Foreman, of course, is the same Dave Foreman who co-founded Earth First!, authored Ecodefense: a field guide to monkeywrenching, and Confessions of an Eco Warrior, and plea-bargained his way out of prison time for his part in a plot to blow up power transmission lines.)

GEA biologist, Evan Frost says "The Wildlands Project is only an idea right now. Certainly some of the concepts and principles of the Wildlands Project, to some extent, we try to apply." Their efforts have been incredibly successful. "Our first step ...was to collect existing geographic information on biological diversity." Using procedures precisely like those set forth in the GBA, the group used a "coarse filter" mapping system to identify roadless areas, late-successional and old-growth forests, ecosystem and habitat types, watershed conditions (indicated by cumulative human disturbance), and landscape linkages (corridors). They have delineated boundaries of 504 watersheds and developed a method of ranking the relative value of each.

A GEA report published in January, 1995, says: "Conservation biologists and land-use planners have developed a widely accepted model for regional reserve design that offers the greatest potential for sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. This model consists of the following:

• a system of core reserves, managed primarily for their biodiversity values;

• a gradation of buffer zones that surround reserves and insulate them from intensive land use activities, while still permitting compatible uses within;

• landscape linkages (or habitat corridors) which allow the movement of organisms and processes between reserves; and

• an overall landscape management plan that integrates these various elements."

The activities performed by this organization since 1992 are precisely those proposed in the "Wildlands Project," which are precisely those cited in the Global Biodiversity Assessment, Section 10, which is to become the basis for formulating protocols required for the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Barely six years old, the GEA has a staff of seven, including two Conservation Biologists, a membership of 2,000 individuals and organizations, and funding support from "10 to 20 foundations interested in the environment." Funding support comes from Great Pacific Patagonia, the Lazar Foundation, Western Canada Wilderness Committee's West Kootenay Branch, board member Tom Campion ($10,000), and from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

In 1991, the year before GEA was born, Pew gave $1.6 million to the Tides Foundation. A major project of the Tides Foundation is its "Incubator" program which provides start up money for selected Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs). Some of those groups are in the northwest, working to advance the Columbia River Basin bioregion. Others, particularly the Environmental Working Group (EWG), and its Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research (CLEAR) are devoted to discrediting wise use and property rights organizations.

Against the back drop of a three-year, on-the-ground campaign by well-funded GAGs, now enters the federal government.

The Global Biodiversity Assessment sets forth a system of ecosystem management. Not surprisingly, Al Gore created an Ecosystem Management Task Force in the White House two years ago, Chaired by Katy McGinty. On May 14, 1993, Katy McGinty sent a letter to the Secretaries of Interior, Commerce, Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the State Department advising them that the President and Vice President intended to make a joint announcement with Prime Minister Mulroney of plans to create a transboundary "preserve" in British Columbia and the U.S. Northwest. The Task Force oversees the Interagency Ecosystem Management Coordinating Group (IEMCG) which consists of 20 agencies and departments charged with implementing the new Ecosystem Management Policy, then under development by the Department of Interior and the EPA.

On December 7, 1994, the Federal Register published official notice of an 18-month study in the Upper Columbia River Basin to develop a "scientifically sound, ecosystem-based strategy for management of lands under the agencies' jurisdictions within the basin in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, and a small part of Washington. The area covers approximately 73,000 square miles. A similar study was launched, with less fanfare, several months ago called the Interior Columbia River Basin study. Together, the two studies cover an area in the northwest that reaches from British Columbia to Nevada, an area designated by the Wildlands Project to be a high priority bioregion.

Unwilling to wait for the wheels of government to turn this area into a protected area, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund and the Wilderness Society filed suit in Federal Court to save endangered species of salmon. Judge Dan Ezra ruled from his Honolulu District that all mines, grazing, logging, road building, and other activities cease in six national forests as of March 16. Ironically, the U.S. Forest Service had scheduled a 30-city satellite workshop to kick-off its study of the Upper Columbia River Basin. Two Idaho towns, Challis and Salmon, which were especially hard hit by the court order, were dropped from the satellite hook up. The court order closes 190 active mines, cancels 532 grazing permits, cancels millions of board feet of timber under contract for sale, and closes 8.2 million acres of forest area, according to the Idaho Falls Post Register (January 22, 1995, page A8). A similar lawsuit by the same plaintiffs shut down the spotted owl habitat.

The Biodiversity treaty has not been ratified. There is no legislation authorizing the "Wildlands Project." Nevertheless, the Wildlands Project is being implemented systematically by the federal government with coordinated assistance from GAGs in the field. It should come as no surprise. The Wilderness Society which launched the spotted owl lawsuit, and the salmon lawsuit was presided over by George Frampton until he was tapped by Al Gore to preside over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Wilderness Society also gave us Alice Rivlin, now head of the Office of Management and Budget. Director of Policy Analysis for the Department of Interior is none other than Brooks Yeager, formerly chief lobbyist for the National Audubon Society, which along with The Nature Conservancy, funded Reed Noss' writing of the Wildlands Project.

Ross now works for the National Biological Service (formerly the National Biological Survey) and has already completed a report to be released in March which reveals "...we're not just losing single species, we're losing entire assemblages of species and their habitats." It should be no surprise that his report will contain the same finding published in the "Wildlands Project" and the GBA. Consider this: Gustave Speth who served 10 years as head of the World Resources Institute (WRI) is now head of the United Nations Development Program. His Senior Associate for Policy Affairs at the WRI was Rafe Pomerance, who is now Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment, Health and Natural Resources. This linkage between the international environmental community and the U.S. government, coupled with the linkage between major GAGS and the U.S. government reveals how and why an unratified treaty is being implemented in the United States. (See related article on page 26)

The World Resources Institute is one of three non-government organizations (NGOs) that have dominated the development of the global environmental agenda. Working closely with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), these NGOs have initiated, nurtured, and brought into existence Agenda 21, the Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and are rapidly developing other treaties to address sustainable development, population control, poverty, and women.

Ecosystem Management: Sound Science or Pantheism

By Billie Jean Redemeyer

Alston Chase, scholar, journalist, and nationally syndicated columnist on issues of the environment, held a workshop on Ecosystem management at the Western States Coalition Summit III in Utah. Dr. Chase maintains that social control is the purpose of the environmental movement, and that the leaders of ecosystem management theories are, indeed, pantheists - worshipers of nature.

At first, this sounded like heresy, until Dr. Chase explained the root of his reasoning, going back in time. In 1948, the Atomic Energy Commission, according to Chase, funded "ecosystem studies" to determine the effects of nuclear fallout on the earth. It was at that time that ecology was made a science. There were notable scientists mentioned by Chase who were busy arguing the fact that the environment was static, was not subject to change its nature, and that man's intervention had ruined the stability of nature by creating change. Thus began the new science of ecology that would be used as a punitive measure against society, rather than a scientific tool for the betterment of the environment.

"There is no distinct definition for ecosystem," according to Dr. Chase. "Unfortunately, the idea is bogus. While there are many reasons to protect land, water and wildlife, saving ecosystems isn't one of them. Ecosystems are mathematical tools used to analyze energy feedback loops. You can't draw them on maps. There is no evidence that, left undisturbed, they reach equilibrium. The disappearance of the spotted owl would be an aesthetic calamity, but would no more jeopardize humanity than the extinction of Irish Elk 10,000 years ago put an end to life on the Emerald Isle."

Continuing along this line, Chase concluded that "ecologists" have claimed the right to control society in order to stabilize nature. To support his point of view, we have only to look at the Endangered Species Act - a huge cauldron of regulations bearing unfunded mandates and social control, in the name of saving any species arbitrarily added to their long list. Oddly enough, this Act has not yet legitimately delisted one single species in twenty-plus years of its existence.

This is a crucial point for those who advocate change for the good. While there are legitimate problems which need attention, and indeed, change, the current trend of over-regulation is clearly not working. It needs to be pointed out, said Chase, that the newcomers to the Congress have "failed to exploit the environmental movement's greatest weakness: that it hasn't protected the environment, and instead has caused the country to waste billions on non-problems."

To further Dr. Chase's point, Bruce Vincent, President of the Alliance for America, and fourth-generation logger, told a spell-bound audience of the trials of his native home, Libby, Montana. Vincent explained how Libby is reeling from failed federal policies which have cut its economic base by over 60%. One case in point is the reintroduction of wolves to his community. Vincent had the opportunity to ask federal officials why they wouldn't consider putting the wolves, or grizzly bears near the Sacramento region of California. According to Vincent, they recoiled in horror at the thought of doing such a thing in an area "with so many people (voters)." His conclusion is that the rural population of Libby is disposable, compared to the many who live in Sacramento. And he should know! The targeted habitat for wolf reintroduction is right in his own backyard!

Ecology is a pseudo- science, and using holism for the purpose of social control has no basis in sound science, according to Dr. Chase. "Evolution only happens when there is a change, and only to individuals." That would cause debate when discussing preservation of ecosystems. Notably, Dr. Chase explained that management for late succession systems (old growth forests) will bring about the early demise of other species, such as certain butterflies and larger herbivores, like deer, which depend on fodder other than very large, old trees. Whether by succession of fire, logging or demanding total preservation, the old growth forest becomes a monoculture, supporting far less habitat for a variety of other species. In the case of the old growth forests, the agencies "play God" and target only two species worthy of preservation, the large older trees, and the spotted owl.

Bruce Vincent calls the notion that preservation equals conservation "The Big Lie". He is convinced that the slick marketing of fear and conflict over our resources draws big money from an America whose real enemy is ignorance. Dr. Chase is far more adamant that the basis of current environmental use conflict is rooted in societal control, and not sound management practices at all. He stressed that "Nationa l Preservation Policy is a contradiction in terms, and that biological failure defines political success."

Dr. Chase did not fail to mention the Biodiversity Treaty and the Wild Lands Project within that same international document. He cited that the Wild Lands Project would displace 25% of the population to save 25% of wildlife on this continent. Surely, Libby, Montana residents will have first-hand knowledge of the effects created by such maneuvers. This is tragic. The order of the day by many legislators is to follow the notion of returning our land to a perceived notion of a pre-European man, pristine condition. Since preservation lies in the eyes of the beholder, according to Chase, what then, would be the agreed-upon outcome? For some, it is the Wild Lands Project, contained in the protocols of the Biodiversity Treaty.

Perhaps, those of us nestled in our small western communities, or larger urban cities, feel we have nothing to fear from all of this - but think again. Dr. Chase concludes that the environmentalist policy makers convince us that humans are basically bad with regard to nature. However, when humans perpetrate crimes on each other, such as murder, stealing, etc., they are fundamentally good people...just victims of their own environment (parents, traumas, poverty, etc.). Obviously, the answer is not defined as all one way or another, but will bear itself out, somewhere in the middle. Current regulations, however, do support the vilification of many responsible resource-based industries, in total. Changing them to reflect reality - not a utopia - is what Chase wants to see.

Ironically, in a former conversation with U.S. Forest Service personnel, including the Chief of Forest Service, Jim Lyons, Dr. Chase grinned, while relating the experience to the Summit audience, "I told them, you don't know what you're doing...and they agreed!" When asked how to approach Forest Service personnel regarding their Ecosystem Management Policy, Dr. Chase reiterated, "Start with the assumption that nature is not stable."

While observing nature as an ever-evolving entity, he cited the need for more free market strategies, and warned against allowing the federal government to push "Biocentrism", wherein all living things have equal rights. He is not shy in pointing out that the Endangered Species Act has given bugs, slugs and other invertebrates equal standing with humans.

Dr. Chase is far from alone in his findings. Many notable scientists in the disciplines of archeology, paleontology and geology have proven that the ever-popular myth of a pristine state of the land prior to pre-European man on this continent, is not backed in scientific fact at all. Many of these scientists have pointed out, time after time, that climate, global catastrophes, and the species themselves, have brought about many extinctions, well before man was present. While no one advocates man hastening the extinction of any species, we must learn that man cannot save every species either.

So it goes. Like man, nature is in a constant state of flux. To irreparably harm the earth for profit is absurd. But to use pseudo-science as a tool to control our society should scare you to death. If Dr. Chase is correct in his findings, the Ecosystem Management Plan held dear by the federal agencies could be the biggest fraud perpetrated against this nation to date.

Ecosystem Management Act of 1995

(S93 - Senator Mark Hatfield [R-OR] January 4, 1995)

Analysis:

The Ecosystem Management Act amends Section 103 of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (43 U.S.C. 1702) by adding three new subsections under section (A) Definitions: (q) Indian tribes, (r) Systems approach, which is defined to mean an "interdisciplinary scientific method of analyzing the ecosystem as a whole that takes into account the interconnections of the ecosystem;" and (s) Tribal organizations.

The bill also adds two new sections to the law: 216 Ecosystem Management, and 217 Ecosystem Management Commission. Section 216 sets forth the principles under which ecosystem management will be carried out:

(1) Human populations form an integral part of ecosystems

(2) Human needs should be addressed in the context of other environmental attributes;

(A) In recognition of the dependency of human economies on viable ecosystems;

(B) In order to ensure diverse, healthy, productive and sustainable ecosystems;

(3) A systems approach to ecosystem management furthers the goal of conserving biodiversity;

(4) Ecosystem management provides for the following:

(A) Stewardship of natural resources;

(B) The formation of public/private partnerships;

(C) Promotes public participation in decisions;

(D) Use of "best available" science;

(E) Establishes "Cooperative planning and management:"

(F) The implementation of cooperative activities among public and private landowners;

Section 217 creates an "Ecosystem Management Commission" and an "Ecosystem Management Advisory Committee" and authorizes $3 million for their work. The Commission consists of 16 Congressmen from Senate and House Natural Resource and Appropriation Committees, equally divided between majority and minority members. The Commission's duties are to conduct studies to :

(A) Define ecosystem management;

(B) Identify appropriate geographic scale;

(C) Identify opportunities for and constraints on ecosystem management among public entities and private landowners;

(D) Identify strategies for implementing ecosystem management;

(E) Examine existing law and recommend procedures for facilitating compliance with ecosystem management;

(F) Examine the budget for changes needed to facilitate ecosystem management;

(G) Identify incentives to encourage public entities and private landowners to assist the federal government in ecosystem management;

(H) Identify disincentives for those who refuse to assist the federal government;

(I) Determine whether or not to create

(i) a new River Basin Commission

(ii) a new interstate compact

(iii) or take any other related action

(J) Identify case studies from different regions (including the Columbia River Basin and the New York-New Jersey Highlands) to serve as models for implementation of ecosystem management.

The Commission must meet not later than 180 days after enactment and is empowered to:

(1) Conduct hearings;

(2) Secure information from any federal agency or department;

(3) Exercise the same mailing privileges as any federal agency

(4) Accept, use, and dispose of gifts or donations of service or property.

Commentary:

The Ecosystem Management Act is unnecessary; the final report has already been written. Supporting studies are already completed and many are published. Senator Hatfield's bill is a charade to legitimize a process that began in 1992.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (Biodiversity Treaty) requires participating nations to conform to protocols established by the Conference of the Parties (COP). The Treaty also requires the development of a Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA) (Article 25) to provide the "scientific" basis for the COP's protocols. The principle of ecosystem management is deeply ingrained in the GBA.

Treaty proponents were so confident of U.S. ratification under the Clinton/Gore Administration that they began preparing for implementation of the treaty's requirements. Al Gore created an Ecosystem Management Task Force in the White House. Both the Department of Interior (DOI) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed extensive ecosystem management policies under a new structure called the Interagency Ecosystem Management Coordinating Group (IEMCG) which consists of 20 federal agencies and departments.

Had the treaty been ratified, legislation would be unnecessary. In fact, the new ecosystem management policy specifically relies on "international treaties" to justify expanded regulatory activities. This treaty was not ratified and is not likely to be ratified in this Congress. Consequently, federal agencies that have shifted to the ecosystem management policies are operating without specific legislative authority. Senator Hatfield's bill is an effort to slide authority under actions that have already been taken.

Both the treaty and the policy revisions were designed to avoid the spotlight of public debate. The bill now in Congress must be debated, vigorously.

It is ludicrous to enact a law that declares ecosystem management to be the policy of the federal government, and in the same law, create a commission to figure out what ecosystem management is. There is no legal definition of ecosystem management. Like the terms "biodiversity," and "sustainable use," ecosystem management can be whatever a sufficient authority declares it to be.

All three terms are defined profusely in the Global Biodiversity Assessment which has not been officially published, nor adopted by the COP of the Biodiversity Treaty, nor has the treaty been ratified. Were ecosystem management defined in Senator Hatfield's bill as it is defined in the GBA, and as it is being implemented on the ground, the American public could see what is in store before the policy becomes law. Public awareness could be disastrous for the bill and for Senator Hatfield.

The Senator is using the same tactics used by the treaty proponents: warm, fuzzy language, no definitions in the law, with daggers, swords, and bombshells to follow in the regulations and protocols. While the bill is aimed at federal lands, there are repeated references to private land owners. The actual policy, already drafted by the EPA and DOI, is a national policy for all lands, public and private. Every square inch of land and water is in an ecosystem.

The bill assumes that ecosystem management should be adopted as policy, even though what it is, remains to be legally defined. Usage of the term throughout the federal agencies, Green Advocacy Groups (GAGs), and the media avoid critical analysis and is always found in the context of improving the environment. The term, the concept, and its definitions must be challenged.

The term "ecosystem management" implies active resource management decisions by people empowered to make such decisions. In Senator Hatfield's bill, those people are agents of the federal government. (In the GBA, those people so empowered are not agents of the federal government.)

Herein lies the first major departure from the historic principles on which America was founded. In America, and in any free enterprise economy, the landowner must have the authority to manage his own land, and the resources it contains. This fundamental principle is the bedrock of personal freedom and economic security. No other person has as much at risk, hanging on every management decision, as does the owner. As powerful as this principle has proven to be in advancing the world's prosperity, it has become the target of an old, failed, idea which has been recycled and now re-presented in politically correct language such as "ecosystem management, sustainable use, and biodiversity."

Ecosystem management by government authority precludes the possibility of land use and resource management decisions by private landowners. The two concepts are mutually exclusive.

The bill, and the treaty, attempt to downplay this enormous transition from private owner control to government control of land and resources by what they call "public/private partnerships." This is one of the warm, fuzzy terms that veils a real bombshell. In the documents that surround the GBA, authority for land use and resource management decisions is discussed at length. Ultimately, ecosystems are to be identified within defined "bioregions" which are to be governed by a bioregional council which consists of representatives from local governments within the bioregion, individuals, and NGOs (non-government organizations) that are expected to be the primary instruments of education, oversight, and management.

Senator Hatfield's bill reveals its bias toward the treaty objectives by specifically identifying "conservation organizations" as participants in the ecosystem management advisory committee, and specifically precluding "property rights" or "wise use" organizations from participation. Moreover, the Columbia River Basin which is suggested as a model case study, has been under study by a gaggle of GAGs called the Greater Ecosystem Alliance (GEA) since 1992. (See related story, page 4).

Land Grab U.S.A.

The National Heritage Corridor Plan

By Carol W. LaGrasse

The National Heritage Corridor project is an environmental watershed comparable to the Endangered Species Act and wetlands controls. Comprised of over a hundred separate riverways, greenways, historic linkages, ridgelines, and trails, the National Heritage Corridors project is gaining on hundreds of fronts. It has been bubbling along through the halls of Congress without so much as a whimper. The affected title "National Heritage Corridors" is an alias for federal zoning of private land.

Also called the "American Heritage Partnership" program, the corridor system is not an innocent plan to increase local cultural and historic pride or to promote tourism. The corridor program is a way of creating habitat for biodiversity. Beyond "biodiversity," the corridor program is a way of centralizing power. The corridor program is not to promote culture, but to put culture in mausoleums.

Initially, tourism, yuppie backpacking, and youth environmental education are supposed to flood the corridors. Heritage corridor proponents cite the Cuyahoga Valley as a "successful" corridor. Indeed, it is a perfect example, although a step beyond national zoning under the National Park Service. The towns in the Cuyahoga Valley near Akron, Ohio, lost much of their population and tax base as the National Park Service condemned, burned and tore down homes and farms.

Today what remains of Cuyahoga towns is overburdened to maintain local roads to handle the busloads of city youth trucked to the vacated river valley for environmental indoctrination. Eighty-five percent of the geographic area of the township of Boston is gone. The Town can maintain its services only by applying to the National Park Service for gratuitous help. Like other areas being engulfed by government land acquisition, it is at the mercy of the very entity that is taking its land.

The corridors are part of the triage of the culture. Elite will decide which region survives. As the population, money and power shift to the cities, triage of rural America can be accelerated. In the end, the visits by urbanites and the tourism will go, too.

The Heritage Corridor project is directed at the eastern half of the United States rather than the west. The federal government already is the dominant landowner in the far west.

Supposedly instigated at the grassroots, the National Heritage Corridor project is planted in localities by preservationist organizations and individuals stimulated by national policymakers.

The National Park Service is the force behind the Heritage Corridor plan. With the exception of a relatively small number of historic and cultural sites that create a little mix to the collection of heritage areas, the corridors are river beds. The idea of the corridors is an extension of the major National Parks, which are being gradually closed to visiting people. The corridor river beds are to be ultimately depopulated to make way for the free movement and migration of animals and even plants. Preservation biologists have determined that "riparian zones" are best to connect wild areas where species thrive, but corridors take land routes, also. The biologist's term for corridors, "land bridges," is more revealing.

A few of the National Heritage Corridors are as small as a city waterfront, but most encompass several counties. The largest planned corridor encompasses the entire 2,500-mile Mississippi riverbed. It is designated simply the "Mississippi River Corridor," with its own bureaucracy and legislative fast track in the U.S. Congress. The corridors are by and large regional entities following a river front across several county or a few state lines, to be ultimately managed by an appointed federal commission.

Appointive federal commissions are a violation of the representative (Republican) form of government guaranteed to every state under Article IV, Section 4, of the Constitution. The powers of the prospective federal or regional commissions to control private land management and acquire land for wilderness and parks are in violation of Amendments IX and X of the Bill of Rights. We don't have regional government yet in the United States, but it is getting closer. The corridors are one of the worst examples yet of the poison that is seeping into every aspect of America.

Four National Heritage Corridors have been established in addition to the two brutal federal takeovers often cited to the uniformed as benign precedents, the Columbia River Gorge Commission and the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreational Area. Each National Heritage Corridor is working its way into or through Congress with promises of porkbarrel (local funds for "economic development" from the federal well) in exchange for betrayal of the Constitution. The National Trust for Historic Preservation enthusiastically depicts the bills as the "Heritage Corridor Avalanche."

While the National Trust for Historic Preservation command center coordinates the individual corridors past unsuspecting localities, key Congressmen working with the National Park Service under the personal attention of Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, are honing and guiding through the Congress the generic legislation to establish the National Heritage Corridor system of which each corridor is intended to become a part.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation takes pride that it helped defeat property rights bills in Oregon, Maryland, and Louisiana.

The generic bills proposed by Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Bruce Vento (D-MN) are carefully couched to emphasize economic development and downplay federal controls of private land, but the incipient language is there. The Vento bill, which is furthest along, calls on the Secretary of the Interior to contract with the states to manage the area and "to provide appropriate regulatory assistance in preserving the area."

The National Park Service recently stated at a congressional hearing that the Augusta Canal National Heritage Corridor should be made consistent with the Vento bill by including a contract with the National Park Service to "modify zoning regulation."

Publications circulating in the preservation community make it clear that the goal is protection of "landscape" from "industrial development, condominiums, and office development." and to protect the "landscape from fragmented nature of town-by-town conventional zoning." The federally designated Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor through Massachusetts and Rhode Island is the most often cited model for the corridors proposed elsewhere in the country. One of these is the corridor that Senator James Jeffords has in mind for the Champlain-Hudson Valley, starting at the Canadian border to meet the one Congressman Hinchey envisions for the region encompassing that part of this district in the Hudson Valley as well as the entire rural remainder of the Hudson riverbed and counties that border the river. Called the "Hudson Valley Greenway" in the state law Hinchey sponsored, the southerly portion is now known in Congress as the Hudson Valley Heritage Area to extend from the Saratoga Battlefield National Park to the New York City line. The dual plans would create a Champlain-Hudson Valley greenline 300 miles long as the crow flies from the Canadian border to New York City, and bring the federal government preservationists right into the historic spine of New York State.

Like the array of other regional entities that preservationists have accomplished and are sneaking through Congress and the state legislatures, the Blackstone River Corridor involves coopting local opposition by creating avenues of participation for local officials and keeping initial upper level government mandates off the backs of localities initially. This and the "economic development," usually tourism, are the first stage to sweeten the deal while the hard-core preservation work follows.

Environmentalism '95:

11 ideas for business to consider in the coming year

Radical environmentalists will continue to be a major force in 1995. They will continue their effective lobbying of politicians, the media, and public opinion. Here are a few thoughts, ideas, and concepts -- some new and some old -- which environmentalists will use to advance

their social and political agenda. Businesses may want to keep them in mind as the year unfolds.

1. Electronic lobbying. Eager to show that they are preparing for the future and are connected to the "information super highway" politicians are eagerly publicizing their e-mail addresses. Environmentalists will use e-mail addresses to bombard politicians and the media with opinions and piles of environmental information. Electronic lobbying will explode. The business community, however, will fail to see the usefulness of e-mail and the information super highway is advancing its own perspective on environmental issues.

2. The precautionary principle. Encouraging adoption of the precautionary principle will be a central goal of the environmental movement. Politicians, the media and the public will accept the precautionary principle with little argument because they think it simply means "be careful." In fact, it means no activity should proceed unless it can be proven with 100 per cent accuracy that the activity will have absolutely no impact on the environment. Since such extreme guarantees are impossible, the precautionary principle is really a way of bringing all economic, social and business activity to a halt. Several government agencies have already stated their plans to include the precautionary principle in their decision-making.

3. Eco-terrorist boycotts. Environmentalists will attempt to terrorize business by threatening and organizing boycotts. The boycotts can be aimed at the products of specific industries and businesses in hope of bringing about changes in those industries and businesses. Alternatively, the boycotts can be aimed at an industry but the real objective is to bring about changes in another, unrelated area. For example, environmentalists have expressed concern about wolf control programs in northern Canada but to force their point they've threatened to organize northern tourism boycotts. Eco-terrorists have found product boycotts to be effective weapons.

4. Sustainable development. This term remains the most constantly referred to environmental concept. It is also the most undefined. Its definition appears to vary from situation to situation. When businesses and governments commit themselves to "sustainable development" they should include a clear and precise definition of the term. Failure to do so, leaves that door open to environmentalists who interpret and use "sustainable development" as a means to shutting the door to any and all development. For environmentalists, sustainable development frequently means no development.

5. Sustainable economic development. At least one national government defines sustainable economic development as development which ensures that the utilization of resources and the environment today does not damage prospects (emphasis added) for their use by future generations.'' It's impossible to conceive of any use of resources or the environment which does NOT have some impact on their potential use in the future. Even to make an enduring commitment to do "nothing" with a wilderness setting has an impact on what future generations can do with a piece of land. Sustainable economic development as defined above is an environmental code word to stop all business, commercial, recreational, and human use of the environment. The definition quoted here is used by the Government of Canada. Businesses should not look to the Canadian government for favorable attention on environmental issues.

6. Biodiversity. Biodiversity is one of the most pleasant sounding, yet most insidious, ideas of the environmental movement. Biodiversity sounds like it involves a nice mix or balance of animal and plant forms. Nothing could be more idyllic. Environmentalists, however, have used the term to mean returning the environment to its original state before humans had an impact. That means shutting down all human activity on the Earth. There are indications that environmentalists intend to follow this path. In New Zealand, Greenpeace has attacked that country's tree plantation industry and has stated that the plantations "may be breaching the international biodiversity treaty." Greenpeace says the impact of plantations must be reversed by "restoring native forests" and "mimicking nature with mixed species planation." In what may or may not be a subtle legal threat, Greenpeace said in a news release, "New Zealand is legally bound to protect biodiversity, under the Biological Diversity Convention signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, and ratified by the (New Zealand) Government last year. Current (tree plantation) practices contravene the provisions of the Convention." All signatories to the Convention may find themselves in court in the near future. Environmentalists will use legal action against governments and companies to make their point.

7. Public participation. Increasingly, governments are legislating that public participation must be a part of the process of developing environmental programs and policies and in reviewing all types of development from an environmental perspective. Much of this public participation will take place at the local municipal level, not at the state, provincial, or national level. This presents a major problem for the business sector. Trade and business associations are not prepared to take part in the public participation process at the local level. The so-called "larger picture" is their ball game. In addition, local business organizations, such as chambers of commerce, do not have the resources to follow and keep on top of prolonged public participation hearings at the local level. Environmental groups, however, have the volunteer resources to monitor and constantly influence public participation and opinion at the local level. The business community needs to adopt new methods to monitor and participate in local public hearings where significant environmental decisions will be made.

8. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In an effort to take the "politics" out of environmental decision making, politicians will formally look to NGOs for environmental guidance, suggestions, and recommendations. Politicians will believe that NGOs are politically neutral and have no axe to grind on environmental issues. Minimal research would show, however, that many NGOs are simply political action groups. They have a strong social and political agenda which is anti-business and supports centralized government control of virtually all forms of economic and human activity. The media will continue to overlook this bias of many NGOs.

9. Round Tables on the Environment and Economy. Business will continue to be enthralled with the idea of sitting down with environmentalists in so-called Round Tables on the Environment and Economy. Business will make big PR waves about its participation in round table discussions and the enlightened "compromises" each side made on environmental issues. Sometime, but not in 1995, business will realize that business made all the concessions and compromises in these discussions. Environmentalists gave up nothing because they had nothing but words to bring to the table.

10. Stakeholders. Corporate PR staff and their consultants will continue to embrace the idea of "stakeholder" consultations when dealing with environmental matters. Many stakeholders, however, have nothing at stake other than ill-conceived opinions and their only goal is to oppose business on all environmental issues. Business needs to refine stakeholder communications to ensure it is dealing with people who really have something at stake and whose goals are not only to oppose but to understand and resolve issues. Without doing this, stakeholder communications is as effective as a socialist trying to get a capitalist to give up the profit motive. Stakeholder communications is a useful and effective vehicle, if it's fine tuned.

11. Cumulative environmental effect. In the coming months, environmentalists will be promoting the idea of cumulative environmental effect (CEE). In its simplest terms, CEE means determine the total environmental impact of development and business activities within a certain area such as an eco-system or watershed. Undertaking the necessary research to determine a CEE and then reaching agreement on what the research means will be immensely costly and time-consuming. Environmentalists will use the idea of CEE to delay projects and inflate the cost of economic development. These are a few of the ideas which will be part of environmental discussions, decision-making, and lobbying in 1995. Keep your eyes open for them. And, be prepared!

The Precautionary Principle

By John O. Mongoven

A massive attack is underway in the United States against products made through chlorine chemistry; and one of its most troubling aspects is its rejection of accepted scientific method. Activists leading the attack have avoided the responsibility of proving their allegations against products they want banned, by employing a new approach, which they have euphemistically dubbed "the Precautionary Principle".

The Precautionary Principle holds that a manufacturer must prove that its product does no harm, before it can be marketed. It presumes that all chemical processes are harmful until proven otherwise.

The far-reaching implications of developing American public policy by instinct and feel - rather than by use of logic, empirical evidence and sound science - are profound for all American industry.

It is difficult to discard a long-held public policy, unless it can be readily replaced with a new one. That is what the activists plan to do: replace established scientific method with the Precautionary Principle. These activists want to use this weapon to control the behavior of other Americans, especially behavior which includes consumption with which they disagree.

The more strident activists are frustrated by the established Constitutional principle of American government that people have the liberty to do what they choose, unless it is prohibited by government. The power to prohibit activities is carefully delineated in the grant of power from the people to the government. Thus, if the government can prove a valid reason to prohibit an activity to safeguard public health and safety, it may do so. This premise requires that an activity or product be proven to be harmful to public health or safety before being prohibited.

Faced with this frustrating imposition of linear thinking -logic and science interfering with activists' views of sound public policy - activists created a new policy premise, called the "Precautionary Principle", to replace the existing standard.

If the type of thinking that underpins the Precautionary Principle prevails, future historians may refer to the last score of years of the twentieth century as the "Death of the Linear Period" or the "Birth of the Holistic Age".

The Renaissance, with its devotion to logic and the abstract purity, clarity and certainty of Euclid and Aristotle,

provided Western civilization with the basis for scientific learning and its tools of progress. The development of modern printing by Gutenberg and Caxton yielded widespread dissemination of accumulated knowledge and the new "rational" thought process. It helped imbed linear thinking into argument, science and our social institutions, including the church, politics and law.

Anti-biotechnology activist and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends (FET) Jeremy Rifkin recognizes the limiting effect of linear thinking on consideration of public policy. He has devoted whole books to discrediting it (Algeny and Entropy). He admonishes his followers and adherents never to use digital clocks because they are tools of the power structure which force the public mind into linear thinking. He maintains that a watch showing all the hours in the day promotes holistic thinking and an intuitive understanding of time.

In 1964, Marshall McLuhan predicted in Understanding Media, that the processes of the age of printing would give way in the age of electricity to new ways of thinking which he described as "non-lineal, repetitive, discontinuous, intuitive, and proceeding by analogy instead of sequential arguments."

Since he wrote those lines, we have seen increasing evidence of McLuhan's prediction being fulfilled, and its impact on public policy. The modern day "common knowledge", as understood by most Americans, stems not from examination of facts, but from analogy and individual or group intuition. Sometimes, this "common knowledge" is influenced and directed by groups specifically attempting to shape perceptions which are false, but derive from this new way of thinking.

It is accepted common knowledge about America that the rate of violent crime is increasing, that more African-Americans than Whites are on welfare, that today a smaller percentage of jobs are in manufacturing than twenty years ago, and that Japanese are obtaining more patents than Americans. But none of it is true.

Errors in common knowledge abound, and are often compounded by the manipulation of "possible" truths which become widely believed, such as the impact of a 10% decrease in the ozone layer, the potential impact of global warming, the impact of manmade as compared to natural toxins, and the impact of acid rain. The unconscionable establishment of public policy based on known error to serve the ends of an individual or group is compounded when the issue involves science, because the average American is ignorant of science and scientific method. Noted University of Michigan Political Scientist, Dr. Slyvia Tesh, found that when community groups which claimed harm from exposure to chemicals were shown that the relationship was scientifically untrue, they invariably rejected the findings, because they "intuitively" knew the exposure was dangerous.

Tesh explains that the key to developing successful public policy without scientific validity is to change the "common knowledge" of the community, or to convince the public that it knows intuitively that something is so, regardless of the science. Tesh says, "To be really successful, social movements also have to change significant aspects of what the general public has always believed to be good, true and important."

The outcome of the debate over the Precautionary Principle is likely to be the most important, lasting result of the anti-chlorine campaign. Though almost 15 years old, the concept as it is now understood was formulated in the early days of Greenpeace's Chlorine-Free By '93 campaign.

It developed its current definition of "precaution" in the wake of the 1991 Wingspread Conference, at which scientists discussed possible links between various health problems and organochlorines and organohalogens. The 22 scientists at the conference agreed that organochlorines and "other persistent toxics" could cause reproductive anomalies, developmental problems and cancers. They also declared that they can "estimate with confidence" that some organochlorines mimic the estrogen hormone in human cells.

The alleged consequences of estrogen mimicking are countless: breast cancer, endometriosis, birth defects, low sperm counts and dozens of other seemingly unrelated medical problems are now blamed on chlorine-chemistry products. Despite their "confident estimates", the Wingspread scientists agreed that, "There are many uncertainties in our predictions." In effect, they could not prove their conclusions.

Although to a linear thinker proving a negative is impossible, the Precautionary Principle quickly gained adherents in the environmental community and among anti-corporate consumer advocates. To these activists, it is the perfect regulatory tool. If adopted by government, it would achieve some of the primary goals of the activist movement, i.e., revolutionize American thinking about regulation, constitutional law, and government's role in society.

Because the implications of the Precautionary Principle were so revolutionary, and because of industry's lack of understanding of radical environmentalism, America's industries did not address Greenpeace's arguments in their early stages. By 1993, the concept had gained substantial currency within more moderate environmentalist and consumer groups. National Wildlife Fund's (NWF) recent acceptance of the Precautionary Principle premise illustrates the extent to which it is now accepted by the environmental movement.

Greenpeace did not create the Precautionary Principle. European environmentalists coined the term during the early 1980s, and it was intended as an ethic, not a regulatory tool. It declared that environmental policy must "anticipate, prevent and attack the causes of environmental degradation."

Activists in the United States did not adopt the concept until 1990. Prior to that, radical U.S. activists were promoting the concept of "reverse onus". Reverse onus, which later was incorporated into the Precautionary Principle, declared that once some members of a chemical class - such as organochlorines - were determined to be hazardous, then manufacturers of other chemicals in that class must be required to prove their products are not dangerous.

In 1991, some in the radical environmental community admitted publicly that their opposition to chlorine was only a first step in a larger anti-chemical movement. In the expansion of the movement's target from one class of chemicals to the entire chemical industry, the Precautionary Principle became an important weapon.

The sweeping condemnation of the entire VIIA family of the Periodic Table meant that the "reverse onus" approach would have to be expanded to include, in effect, all industrial products. Greenpeace challenged industry to prove that all chemicals are harmless. Thus, the current definition was born. The below-the surface definition is that sound science is to be ignored whenever it does not suit activists' purposes.

In 1991 and 1992, the environmentalist community used three different definitions for the Precautionary Principle. The Europeans called for general precaution mainly to avoid legal difficulties. The International Joint Commission on the Great Lakes (IJC) considered the term a synonym for "reverse onus", which it applied to specific classes of chemicals. Meanwhile, radical environmentalists in the United States argued that manufacturers of all new chemicals must prove their products do not cause harm to public health.

By the beginning of 1993, the radical anti-chlorine campaign had gained adherents inside and outside of the

The Precautionary Principle

environmental movement. Greenpeace saturated women's health groups, groups concerned about birth defects, pseudo-scientific activist groups and mainstream environmentalists with their message of fear.

Other definitions of the Precautionary Principle soon faded as the entire activist community began using Greenpeace's definition. In October, 1993, the IJC called for adoption of the principle and interpreted it much more closely to the Greenpeace definition. The IJC statement said: "An incomplete understanding of the underlying science and an inability to arrive at precise risk assessment value should not be used as a reason to postpone measures to prevent environmental degradation."

Risk assessment is the Precautionary Principle's primary target. It is axiomatic that if a substance must be proven risk-free, there is no risk to be assessed. Many activists, particularly in consumer and health fields, are not willing to accept any level of risk, though this is technically impossible.

The Precautionary Principle, however, is likely to have significant influence on policy-making in the long term; however, many variables will determine what remains of the idealistic, though logically impossible, current definition. The definition that evolves will be influenced by the activists' strength when Congress considers the Precautionary Principle. It also will be determined by the amount of support the principle gets from the administration in power and by the status and tone of the risk-assessment debate at the time Congress considers it - all of which will be influenced by industry's resolve and counter-arguments.

American industry should take the Precautionary Principle seriously, and develop a strategy to deal with it. Whatever that strategy is, it must include development and public acceptance of a rational risk-assessment policy.

A national risk-assessment policy based on sound science will require an all-inclusive public debate. It will not gain public acceptance if it appears that it was developed solely by industry, scientists and government.

The impetus for such a public debate would best come from highly respected private organizations within the United States. An ideal partnership to undertake such a national debate would be the League of Women Voters and the American Chemical Society (AMS).

These two organizations could in turn attract other credible organizations - and even accept corporate donations for the project - without jeopardizing their credibility. Clearly, given the issue's importance to women's organizations, and children's welfare organizations, these and reasonable environmental groups also should be encouraged to participate.

At various points in the debate, governments would have to be brought in, beginning with state and local governments.

In the absence of such a national debate and its attendant development of an accepted national policy, corporations ought to develop their own objectives for a risk-assessment policy, and design strategies to achieve acceptance of those objectives at all governmental levels.

This is not an issue of tomorrow. Risk-assessment is being debated. Policy is being formed.

Currently, almost a dozen committees in Congress are considering some aspect of risk-assessment, and the President's Commission on Risk-Assessment and Risk Management is formulating the administration's position on the issues.

In addition, the President's Commission on Sustainable Development has published what it calls its "Vision Statement" for a sustainable United States. Principle number nine of that statement reads: "Where public health may be adversely affected, or environmental damage may be serious or irreversible, prudent action is required even in the face of scientific uncertainty."

That sounds a lot like the Precautionary Principle.

If industry does not participate in the process and ensure that logic and sound science prevail, it will have to live with the consequences, including the kind of fuzzy thinking which brought us the likes of the Precautionary Principle.

Editor's note:

Why mining law reform failed: a post mortem

By: Paul K. Driessen

The mining law reform package arrived full of sound and fury, accompanied by claims that American companies were "ripping off the public," and that legislation drafted by Senator Dale Bumpers and Congressman George Miller was the only way to stop the "thievery." The bill strutted and fretted a brief moment on the congressional stage - and then expired with barely a whimper. Proponents claim it was mugged by powerful mining interests, but western senators and governors say the bill's own excesses and its proponents' unwillingness to compromise sealed the reform effort's fate.

Virtually everyone agrees that the century-old 1872 Mining Law is much in need of an overhaul. Its patent pro-visions, for example, are simply out of touch with today's land use philosophies, and its fee structure no longer reflects the fair market value of publicly owned mineral lands.

However, like the Clinton and Cooper health care reform packages, the Miller-Bumpers conference committee measure exaggerated the problems, relied on faulty economic analyses, created vast new layers of bureaucracy and overrode existing state laws. If enacted, it would have destroyed jobs and cost far more than any royalty revenues it might have collected.

Historically, in contrast to petroleum and coal, hardrock minerals have not been subject to federal royalties. However, mining companies still pay hundreds of millions of dollars annually in the form of state royalties and various taxes. In fact, some 38 cents out of every dollar in mining commerce goes to federal, state and local governments. In other words, a $400 ounce of gold already generates $152 in government revenues, and a billion dollars in mineral production brings in $380 million.

However, these facts did not slow the Sierra Club's Mineral Policy Institute (MPI), which claimed a 12 percent royalty could generate $480 million a year in federal royalty revenues. Unfortunately, these anticipated revenues are illusory - a pot of gold at the end of the royalty rainbow. If the Miller-Bumpers bill had been enacted, Uncle Sam would have become a King Midas in reverse: every ounce of gold he touches would turn to lead.

The Institute's stratospheric projections are based on the assertion that mineral production on federal lands exceeds $4 billion a year. In fact, says the Interior Department, production will be closer to $725 million in 1995 and $535 million in 1998. This would mean annual royalties of $64-87 million at 12 percent or $27-36 million at the still onerous 5 percent rate proposed by the conference bill. That's a far cry from MPI's $480 million a year.

However, the taxpayers would never see these royalties. Just collecting them and auditing companies that mine over 80 nonfuel minerals at constantly fluctuating prices would cost some $70 million a year. In other words, the royalty concept is a money loser right from the start. New land use planning and other requirements called for by Miller-Bumpers would have cost taxpayers additional millions.

There is more. Royalties would be a business expense, resulting in lower tax payments - and meaning current federal, state and local government tax receipts would dwindle by up to one-third. And on top of all this, even a 5 percent gross royalty is greater than the average 3-5 percent profit at most mines. Because it is imposed on gross (rather than net) revenues, the royalty would render portions of many ore bodies uneconomical to mine, causing valuable minerals to be left in the ground and mines to close prematurely.

In a repeat of the luxury tax fiasco, it would also mean thousands of well paid miners would lose their jobs, secondary economic benefits would disappear, and the government would not only lose the 38 cents it now gets per dollar of mining commerce but would have to pay substantial unemployment benefits, as well. Furthermore, protracted litigation and payments for "takings" of mineral properties under other provisions of the conference bill would have cost still more tens of millions of dollars.

Finally, single use land management practices in the western states have already closed more than 410 million acres of public lands to mineral exploration and development - despite stringent environmental laws that regulate literally every phase of the mining process. This is 62 percent of all the public lands in the United States. It is more land than California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada and Arizona combined. Even more critical, the withdrawals effectively lock up over 40 percent of America's best mineral prospects - even though the total acreage affected by all the hardrock mining operations ever conducted in the United States, since colonial days, is less than the amount of land now utilized by airports.

Systematic and environmentally sound exploration and development of mineral resources is critical to the health, security and economic prosperity of an industrialized America. It is also essential to the generation of future mineral royalties. And yet, the conference bill did nothing to address this critical land withdrawal issue.

It was these major shortcomings - coupled with provisions to supersede state water and reclamation laws - that led nearly all the western governors and senators (Democrat and Republican alike) to oppose the Miller-Bumpers proposal. In their view, the conference committee bill reflected the same misconceptions, political hype, faulty economics, junk science, and regulatory excesses that have characterized so much environmental legislation in recent years.

Will Rogers once remarked that even his worst jokes harmed no one. "But with Congress," he said, "every time they make a joke, it's a law. And every time they make a law, it's a joke." In this case, as usual, the joke would have been on us: the taxpayers, consumers and employees who depend on stable supplies of minerals for our industrialized economy.

Fortunately, Miller-Bumpers has gone the way of the failed luxury tax and this session's health care reform bills. Now a new Congress can revisit the issue next year, and develop common sense mining law reform legislation that addresses what is really wrong with the 1872 Mining Law - without destroying mineral production, jobs, industries, and revenues. If the mining industry begins now to educate the Congress, press and public, such a common sense approach to these issues may actually become a reality.

(Paul Driessen is legal and government affairs director for The Creative Machine, a Falls Church, Virginia communications company. He was a legislative aide to former Colorado Senator Bill Armstrong and a minerals analyst for the U.S. Department of Interior.)

References:

Bureau of Land Management, 1991, memorandum on annual costs of administering a hardrock mineral royalty system: cited in Interior Department 1994 Appropriations Bill Report, June 24, 1993, pages 6-9.

Department of Interior, 1993, Economic Implications of a Royalty System for Hardrock Minerals: draft report, ES-1, June 1993, pages 146-148.

General Accounting Office,1992, Value of Hardrock Minerals Extracted from and Remaining on Federal Lands: GAO/RCEO 92-192, page 2.

House Natural Resources Committee, 1993, Oversight hearings on the Clinton Administration's Mining Law reform proposals, July 29, 1993, Serial No. 103-40, page 16.

Hyndman, P., Roberts, C. et. al., The Availability of Federal Mineral Estate in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington; Proceedings of the Symposium on Environmental Management for the 1990s: Denver, Colorado; February 25-28, 1991, pages 263-269.

Jamison, Cy, Director of Bureau of Land Management, statement during October 10, 1991 hearings before the Forestry Subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee.

Johnson, W. and J. Paone, J., 1982, Land Utilization and Reclamation in the Mining Industry, 1930-1980, U.S. Bureau of Mines, Department of the Interior, IC 8862. (Hardrock mining = 3.2 million acres, approximately half of which have been reclaimed; airports = 4.1 million acres.)

Lee, L. Courtland, 1994, Lack of Access Makes Mining Law Reform Irrelevant: Journal of the American Mining Congress, Volume 80, Number 8, pages 12-17.

Earth Force Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

From the Internet

From: "Dann M. Sklarew" <dsklarew@osf1.gmu.edu>

Organization: George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

What is Earth Force?

Earth Force is a new, national organization inspired and shaped by young people for three purposes -- environmental education, environmental action and public citizenship. Earth Force is based upon the principles that youth can significantly benefit the environment through their actions, example and advocacy, that environmental sensitivity learned while growing up will produce more responsible adult decision makers, and that environmental knowledge and understanding is best developed through practical experience.

Funded by a five year start-up grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, Earth Force's vision is "young people everywhere caring about the earth, getting good information about the environment, sharing new ideas, and working together for a clean and healthy future." Its mission is "to enable young people everywhere to act on behalf of the earth." The organization is guided by the Earth Force Youth Advisory Board, which consists of 19 kids ages 9-16 most of whom were delegates of the first Kids World Council in April 1993 in Orlando, Florida.

What are Earth Force's goals?

Earth Force has three major goals: (1) To help young people learn about local, national and global environmental problems -- both their causes and their solutions; (2) To provide young people with opportunities to take part in challenging activities that not only help them learn about environmental issues, but actually contribute to improving the environment; and (3) To give them the means to express their views about environmental issues and to be heard by environmental decision makers and the public.

How is Earth Force funded?

Earth Force has been established by a five year, $12 million start-up grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts. Earth Force will be soliciting additional funding from corporations and foundations in keeping with the organization's guidelines for financial support.

Why has Earth Force been created?

Earth Force responds to the need voiced in the "Plan for the Planet," drafted by the Kids World Council in 1993. The Kids World Council delegates called for "an Earth force, a way kids can get information and share new ideas. Together we will put those ideas into action." Their plan is becoming a reality through Earth Force.

Additionally, a Louis Harris poll of more than 10,000 youths found that kids not only have a strong interest in the environment but also want to participate in programs which will benefit the world around them. Earth Force has been created to supplement existing youth environmental groups and programs by providing the national hands-on initiatives which today's kids want.

What does the Earth Force program look like?

At the core of Earth Force activites are annual campaigns on specific environmental topics chosen by youth. Campaign materials, including student guides and teacher guides will be broadly distributed free of charge through numerous channels. Earth Force is also currently developing a series of action kits for youth. Action kits are designed to provide in-depth action learning for youth interested in exploring specific environmental topics in greater depth. Other Earth Force initiatives include computer networking, an environmental success awards for youth, an 800 information line, and special publications for youth and teachers.

How does Earth Force differ from other youth organizations?

Earth Force puts the power for change directly in the hands of its members -- the kids themselves. Earth Force came from kids, for kids. Kids will help develop its programs and campaigns. From the "Kids Choose" vote to the current "GO WILD FOR WILDLIFE" Campaign, all the way through to programs and activities to be launched in the future, youth will help shape the organization.

Who will participate in Earth Force?

Earth Force is for all interested kids, urban, suburban and rural, roughly between the ages of 6-18. Research conducted on behalf of Earth Force by Louis Harris and Associates shows that concern for the environment is greatest among children in the 4th-6th grades, but declines among older kids. Earth Force hopes to sustain interest in the environment by offering young people information in engaging ways and programs and campaigns which will have a measurable impact. The earlier young people learn that they can make a difference, the stronger their commitment to the environment will become.

How will kids get Earth Force materials?

Young people will learn about Earth Force through a variety of channels, including schools, Earth Force Alliance members, youth groups, church groups, libraries and recreation centers. In addition to the action kits, Earth Force will produce teachers' guides and offer teacher training sessions. Earth Force will work with the media to shed light on its environmental initiatives and educational activities. Finally, in keeping with its mandate, Earth Force plans to incorporate the latest technological developments to attract more kids to environmental programs, including computer networks, CD ROM materials and educational video games.

Who is on the Earth Force Youth Advisory Board?

The 1994 Youth Advisory Board consists of 19 members, ages 9-16, most of whom were delegates to the Kids World Council. The membership reflects a wide range of environmental action and leadership experience as well as the country's ethnic and regional diversity.

Who are Earth Force's advisors?

Earth Force has assembled a team of highly respected environmental education experts to review the environmental education aspects of its programs. In addition, Earth Force will draw on a variety of scientists from organizations such as the World Resources Institute and the Union of Concerned Scientists to ensure its information is accurate and balanced.

Who are Earth Force's adult directors?

Earth Force has assembled a Board of Directors from a wide array of fields. Roy Gamse, President of Earth Force comes to the organization from MCI, where he served as a Senior Vice President. His environmental experience includes ten years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with five years as a Deputy Assistant Administrator of EPA. The initial Board of Directors also includes:

- Douglas Foy, Executive Director, Conservation Law Foundation (Chair of Earth Force)

- Michael Calhoun, Vice President, Lewin-VHI

- Gary Lieberthal, Castle Hill, (Former President of Columbia Television)

- Jack Lorenz, Writer-in-Residence, Izaak Walton League of America

- Marge Tabinkin, Executive Director, Hollywood Women's Political Caucus

- Eddie Williams, President, Joint Center for Political and

Economic Studies

Earth Force's staff in Arlington, Virginia manages the organization on a day-to-day basis. Under Gamse's direction, the staff coordinates the activities of the Youth Advisory Board, develops environmental education and action programs, develops Earth Force's communication programs, and works with other environmental, educational, and youth groups.

Why has Earth Force created the EF Alliance?

Earth Force's campaigns, programs and fundraising will support and supplement existing organizations in its alliance such as the Children's Alliance for Protecting the Environment (CAPE) and The Natural Guard. Alliance members will work in collaboration with Earth Force to develop and distribute environmental education and action materials while providing a structure for children to take part in Earth Force programs.

Which organizations will make up the Earth Force Alliance?

The Earth Force Alliance currently includes the Children's Alliance for Protecting the Environment (CAPE), The Natural Guard and the Tree Musketeers. Earth Force expects to include other organizations as the network becomes more fully established.

How do I get more information on Earth Force?

Why should you care about the Internet?

By Mark Lamb

You've quite probably heard the noise generated by the media recently about the Information Superhighway, the Infobahn, and/or the Internet. Chances are, you're still not quite sure of exactly what they're talking about. There is no shame in this; most of the time, they haven't a clue either.

Furthermore, there are still a large number of people in this world who have an attitude that could be expressed as, "That's nice, but what does it have to do with me?" It may well have far more to do with you than you know, and the relevance of the network, by whatever name, is increasing daily.

First, let me give a brief description of what the Internet is, for those who've been exposed to it only by the mostly hysterical and often less than completely factual media reports. Those of you who have had some initiation into the mysteries of the online world may wish to skip ahead a bit. Look for the stars (*****).

The Internet is a collection of computers all over the world, that have the hardware and software enabling them to talk to one another. This enables the users of those computers to do things like transferring files from one computer to another. It also allows for the people who program those computers to automate the transfer of data from one computer to another. The Internet allows the transfer of digital data between machines; the ingenuity of many programmers allows users to retrieve and publish information in a bewildering variety of ways.

You can, for example, send electronic mail to nearly any user on any connected system in the world. Also available is the ability to "post" messages that can be read worldwide shortly thereafter, and to read such messages posted by others. Almost everyone on machines connected to the Internet can retrieve files from other connected machines by several methods; if you have the ability and the desire, you can connect your machine to the Internet, and make available to others whatever you wish.

This is how the Internet has grown and is growing. People or institutions want to access the incredible amount of information out there already, and/or wish to make available information of their own to the rest of the world. There is a feeling of fair play that's pretty widely accepted: if you plan to use the information and resources made available to you over the Internet in any major way, it's considered polite to make information and resources of your own available. Recently, this concept has become a bit strained; more on that later.

The last (Oct 94) estimate I saw of the size of the Internet was something over 3.8 million machines, or something close to 40 million people online by the accepted "10 per machine" rule of thumb. This is, of course, spread out all over the world, but even so, that's a lot of people. The growth of the Internet has been astounding, too. In the last year, the number of estimated users has doubled (the media still uses the "20 million" estimate, presumably because they don't know where to get the updated numbers from). There is no reason as yet to even expect the rate of growth to go flat. By that I mean that in the next year, I expect fully that the number of users will more than double. The acceleration is accelerating.

It's literally impossible for me to sketch out all that's available to users of the Internet, as I don't know myself. I'll just list some advantages to being connected that spring immediately to mind. Be aware, when reading this, that there are many more resources out there than can be listed, and that I have my biases. There's far more entertainment and educational material out there than I'm aware of, for example, but I think I know where most of the government information is.

(1) Electronic mail. You can send messages of almost any length, to nearly any number of recipients, for (probably) less cost than FAXing a two page letter with a local call. It's generally not as fast as a FAX, but one or two days will see it delivered 99% of the time. Email sent to me generally waits longer for me to answer it than it took to get to me. Messages to hundreds, if not thousands, of recipients aren't uncommon; nor are messages in the several hundred page range.

(2) Message boards, bulletin boards, newsgroups, forums; by whatever name they're known, they still are pretty much the same thing. Users post messages, which then may be read (and responded to) by other users. On the Internet, they're known as newsgroups, and the collection of newsgroups is known as the UseNet. They allow for public discussions of almost anything, in a free and easy manner. It's free speech taken to a level that it's never seen before. Admittedly, there is quite a lot of erroneous information, opinion, and just plain noise in the newsgroups, but there's also the equivalent of many newspaper's worth of hard fact every day. In my considered opinion, the news you get from the UseNet is every bit as credible (with discretion) as what you can get from other sources. You can even subscribe (if it doesn't come on your system at the moment) to the Associated Press and Reuters news wires, and get your news where the newspapers and TV stations do. Best of all, it's a two-way system. If someone says something that you know to be wrong, you can correct them, either in public or in private. TV and radio certainly under-use this concept, and newspapers and talk radio are only a little better, because, after all, it's their forum, and whatever they don't want said will not get said. The UseNet's credo is basically "I may not like what you say, and I may well call you nasty things for saying it, but here, use my computer to get your message to even more people."

(3) Files. Information. Data. There's an awesome amount of stuff out there. How would you like a copy of the Federalist Papers? How about Locke's On Liberty? Or the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin? All of these books, and many more, are out there - free. And it's not just books, it's also programs that you can use for a while, to see if they're really what you need, before you're asked to pay for them. It's collections of facts ranging from things like the Federal budget to a very large collection of movie trivia. Want to know more about virtually anything? The data's out there. The big problem with all of this information available is finding what you want, but it's well worth the trouble. By searching for half an hour or so, you can find more information than your local library is likely to be able to get. The practice of just wandering around, seeing what's available, is called "surfing the 'net," as in the recent IBM OS/2 commercial. It's a far more rewarding pastime than watching TV, and in some places, for some people, less expensive.

(4) Databases. Even more information, but worthy of distinction from "files" because it can be searched and winnowed before you actually have to look at it. For example, there are freely available databases containing:

The text of every bill, resolution, and so forth introduced into the House of Representatives since the beginning of the 103rd Congress.

The Congressional Record since the beginning of the 103rd Congress.

The complete and up to date U.S. Code of Federal Regulations.

Those three are all available from the same place. Other things available are the lyrics to a truly incredible number of songs, for example, or the text of press releases from the White House.

(5) Other. Through combinations of access methods, you can get virtually any information you want, often for no more than the cost of your access to the Internet. For example, I get every day, at a cost of about $1 and with no more effort than telling my computer to "go get it," anything in today's Federal Register regarding endangered species, water regulations, or the environment in general; a collection of about 20 small jokes and humorous stories, the AP/Reuters newswire stories relating to agriculture, politics, world news, telecommunications, government computing news, DOS/PC computer news, and other things; several "general public" type newsgroups in which discussions about agriculture, the environment, and the Internet, among other things, take place; and finally, any electronic mail that may have been sent to me by anyone else who is online. I also can (and do) change this information feed as my interests change.

That's quite a lot, and I'm sure that I left out many times that much again. For now, that's a reasonable description of what the Internet is. Let us then get back to the original question, "Why should I care about the Internet?"

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You should care about the Internet for a number of reasons. If you're reading ecologic, then the chances are that you're concerned about government intervention in your life on many levels. Not only can you get, quickly and with little effort, highly reliable information on what the government as a whole is planning, you can also often access the things they cite as the reason they're going to protect you from yourself.

There's a better than-even-chance that a reader of this publication occasionally has the desire to ask someone else to call their Congresscritters for some reason or another. Imagine, then, instead of mailing letters at $.32 per, or faxing at up to $.25 a page, you could send a very detailed request, with very little in the way of space constraints, to hundreds or thousands of people for less than $1. As an example, if I wished to send a 32 page report to let's say 200 people, it would cost me about 25 cents.

Or let's say that you have information that you wish to be available to a large number of people, but you can't afford to process the requests to mail copies of the document, or whatever. You could put your document (or whatever) out on the Internet, on a public server, and allow anyone who wanted a copy to retrieve it in their own time.

It's not difficult to see that the Internet is going to become a part of daily life to many of us in the immediate future. What is harder to see is the fact that the government is aware of this also, and painfully aware of the reality that they have little to no control of this means of communication. They're working hard to change that, with the support of all of those who feel that it's just fine and dandy for them to be able to say whatever they feel like, but don't wish to extend that courtesy to others.

This means of communication could be the best thing that our country has ever seen, allowing for the education of the citizenry and the awareness on the part of our lawmakers of the true mood of the country, not just what the editors of the newspapers and TV shows see and allow to be seen. This opportunity will be stillborn, however, if we don't take advantage of it.

I'll predict that in 20 years the ability to navigate the Net, whatever its form then, will be far more important than the ability to drive an automobile. Right now, it's nearly impossible to predict what the form of the Net will be in 20 years; it's easy to see that the next 5 to 10 years are going to be pivotal in shaping it. At the moment, I fear that there are far too few of us who value freedom, and are willing to stand up for what we believe, to have much impact on the Net.

What happens when America Online, which freely admits to deleting from its public discussion areas topics and opinions it doesn't find "suitable," digests and assumes control of the major chunk of the Internet they just bought? Or when the government has the ability to completely scan all communications passing through the Net, looking for ideas they find dangerous? What happens to the opportunity inherent in the Net when it costs as much or more to publish information there as it does to set up a TV station? When the content of what you can publish is far more rigidly controlled than it is on TV now?

I could go on, and whip myself into a vision of the future rivaling Orwell's 1984. I won't. I'll just conclude with the observation that, as it now stands, the Internet allows communications between individuals at a speed and cost unrivaled by anything else. It allows individuals very low cost access to information previously unobtainable to all but the elite. Perhaps most important, it allows the average citizen to express his or her opinions in public cheaply and with ensured wide dissemination.

If you can't find something to care about in all of the above, then nothing else I can think of to say is likely to move you, either. And that, my friends, is all I have to say on the matter.

Environmental myths:
timber workers are primitive and obsolete

By Brian Dunn

(Editors note: Brian Dunn is general manager of Stone Forest Industries' sawmill in Eagar, Arizona. During his 20 years in the timber industry, Dunn has held a variety of jobs, from mill worker to timber appraiser to plant manager, in several small, rural communities in Arizona and southern Oregon.)

Much has been written recently about the "War for the West" between urban environmentalists and rural resource workers. In many of these articles, environmentalists have expressed surprise at the intensity of the anger being directed at them by rural Americans. Some here in the Southwest have even accused wise-use groups of using "scare tactics" and "hate-and-violence-provoking" rhetoric to "whip up an anti-environmental frenzy" among rural citizens.

After years of being vilified and defamed by environmental activists, is it any wonder that rural workers have decided that hatred and violence works?

Consider, for example, the environmental movement's assault on the timber industry. One of the many myths environmentalists have employed in their effort to destroy this industry is the characterization of timber workers as primitive heathens who refuse to face the reality that their jobs are obsolete.

"...the culture and livelihood of the lumberjack is no longer possible, just as the fur trader and bison hunter of past decades can no longer carry on their culture."

"Whalers, buffalo hunters and elephant hunters had to find other kinds of work. Ancient forest loggers can do the same."

"What the timber workers alliance want [sic] from us is a whole lot like the workers at a bomb factory insisting that the war continue so they can keep their jobs. We do not have to wage war or sacrifice our forests because some people don't know when it's time to move on!"

"Like the dinosaur in the tar pit, extinction is inevitable..."

These statements (taken from letters and newspaper articles published in this region since 1991) are typical of the negative stereotypes employed by environmentalists to dehumanize timber workers. A classic form of "blaming the victim," the message is plain and simple: timber workers deserve to suffer because they have done bad things to our forests.

Despite an occasional bout of crocodile tears for unemployed loggers and timber-dependent communities, environmentalists do not understand rural workers. They have no respect for the social and cultural values that sustain rural communities, traditional American values such as hard work, independence and innovation. They have no respect for a way of life chosen by millions of Americans, or for their proud contributions to America's high standard of living.

The "War for the West" is not a war over environmental issues. It is a war over values. The issues at stake are not ecological or economic problems, but moral values and cultural beliefs.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has characterized this as a war between the "New West," which is predominately urban, and the "Lords of Yesterday," which is what he calls the resource-based industries that have supported rural Americans since this country was founded. "The winning of the West is past," he told The New York Times Magazine last year. "People don't want to win the West, they want to save it" (emphasis added).

Save it from whom? Clearly, Babbitt and his fellow environmentalists believe it needs to be saved from rural Americans. College-educated professionals who have little direct contact with the land - or the production of the raw materials that provide the necessities and luxuries of their own high standards of living - want to dictate and control how those who make their living from the land conduct their business.

As Babbitt's own history proves, this elitist attitude often grows from a personal sense of guilt at being afforded such a high standard of living by their own ancestors' efforts to harness and use nature's resources. Determined to atone for past mistakes, they insist that their values are more enlightened and more appropriate than the traditional values of rural Americans.

They also insist that, as the majority, the "New West" deserves more say than the "Old West" in how our federal lands are managed. Barry Burkhart, outdoor editor for the Arizona Republic, expressed it as bluntly as anyone ever has: "There are more of us, and we want that reflected in the way public lands are managed."

What the environmentalists want is power, and they are quite willing to destroy the culture of rural America to achieve it. Is it any wonder that rural workers are angry at urban environmentalists?

Dr. Robert G. Lee, a sociologist at the University of Washington, has studied the timber communities of the Pacific Northwest. In an interview with Evergreen magazine in 1990, he expressed concern for the sociological implications of what he discovered:

"Preserving and maintaining this nation's cultural diversity is as important to the survival of America as is maintaining biological diversity. What we are preserving in rural farming and timber communities is people, not abstractions or symbols, but real people who embody basic values which are fundamental to our nation's history and its traditions. It is very difficult to preserve these values in an urban environment."

The most important of these values, Dr. Lee believes, is the rural conviction that hard work is still honorable work.

"Hard work is an increasingly rare value in our society," he said. "(Most) of the nation's working population has little or no connection to the fact that lumber comes from forests or milk comes from cows. People simply don't realize where the conveniences of everyday life come from, and they have no appreciation for the hard work that goes into delivering products to the marketplace."

Fortunately, rural resource workers are proud of their heritage and their values, and they are determined to protect them from the urban onslaught. They are fighting back, using the same grassroots and political tactics perfected by the environmentalists over the past two decades. This both angers and frightens the environmental movement, and it is desperately searching for a new "vision" to stem the tides of a growing backlash.

The Global Environmental Community

By Henry Lamb

Only recently have we come to realize that the explosion of environmental regulations in America over the last 20 years is the result of initiatives undertaken in the international environmental community. Americans are generally unaware that the current battles between "environmentalists" and resource providers were designed years ago, and are but small segments of a global campaign to restructure society.

Proponents of the various "conspiracy theories" will be disappointed to learn that there is no small group of sinister individuals who are manipulating events to gain economic or military control over the planet. Opponents of the various "conspiracy theories," however, cannot ignore the incredible mechanism that has been constructed throughout the world, which is being used to implement a new sustainable development paradigm. The tenets of this new paradigm are, at best, controversial, and at worst, disastrous. The paradigm itself, is the subject of other, on-going explorations. The purpose here is to begin to illuminate the mechanisms that are already in place and are being used to implement the paradigm around the world.

The global environmental community consists of two fundamentally different types of institutions: non-government organizations (NGOs), and government organizations. The paradigm, which is in fact, a global environmental agenda, has its origins in NGOs, but is being implemented primarily through government organizations. It is essential to recognize that both types of organizations play a vital role, and to see clearly what the relationship is between the two types of organizations and how government organizations are being used by NGOs to advance the ideas originated by them.

The international environmental community is dominated by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the World Resources Institute (WRI) - all NGOs. The history of their development and their influence on government organizations will be more meaningful in the context of the development of government organizations.

The formation of the United Nations, October 24, 1945 is a good starting point, although the history of governmental organizations' involvement in environmental issues actually began in the 1800s. The UN, however, tended to consolidate previous efforts, and provide a credible structural framework to address a variety of global problems in a truly global forum. In the fifty years of its existence, the UN has become an almost incomprehensible maze of agencies, organizations, commissions, institutes, and unions, that many people do not even know about, understand, or care about. UN organizations are by no means the only international government organizations involved with the global environmental agenda. The international environmental community includes not only the UN structure, but also structures such as the Organization of American States (OAS), the General Agreement on Tariff & Trade (GATT), now being transformed into the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD), and others.

The UN is the largest and most influential of all the international organizations. It consists of a General Assembly of 185 member nations. Its work is divided among and overseen by four councils: the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Trusteeship Council, and the International Court of Justice. Most public awareness of the UN is related to the Security Council and the General Assembly which is involved with peacekeeping activities. The environmental agenda rarely reaches the general assembly, and often is implemented without involvement of the ECOSOC.

In 1991 (the last year for which complete records are available), 89 of the member nations each contributed less than .01 percent of the UN budget. An additional 60 member nations each contributed less than 1 percent, leaving only 8 nations to bear the rest of the cost. Those nations are: Canada 3.09%; Italy 3.99%; United Kingdom 4.86%; France 6.25%; Germany 9.36%; USSR 9.99%; Japan 11.38%; United States 25%.

Of the hundreds of programs operating under the general auspices of the United Nations, two are of paramount importance: the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

The UNDP began as EPTA, (Expanded Program of Technical Assistance) authorized by Article 55 of the UN Charter. It was expanded by Resolution 304(IV) in 1949, and again in 1958 by Resolution 1240(XIII), and Resolution 2029(XX) changed the name to the United Nations Development Program January 1, 1966. Since 1946, the United States has contributed to this single program a total of $16,169,448,510

The purpose of the UNDP is to provide assistance in technical, economic and social development to developing countries. The UNDP funds or operates thousands of "small-scale" projects in the fields of agricultural and industrial production, health, education, power, transport, communications and other areas. Hundreds of "large-scale" projects include surveys of resources, research, training to develop competent personnel to carry on development work. The UNDP is governed by a 48-member Council elected by ECOSOC. The UNDP Council is the policy-making body which controls the budget and staff. The current Executive head of UNDP is Gustave Speth, who came to the position directly from the World Resources Institute (WRI), a vitally important NGO.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) came into being on January 1, 1973, as the result of recommendations from the 1972 Conference on the Human Environment (Earth Summit I) in Stockholm, Sweden. Maurice Strong chaired the 1972 Conference and became the first Executive Director of UNEP. (He served simultaneously, as the President of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The organization's mandate is "to act as a catalyst to promote environmental considerations in economic development." It depends upon existing organizations, both government and non-government, to implement its programs.

UNEP's purpose includes "promoting and coordinating international cooperation in the field of human environment and providing general policy guidance for the direction and coordination of environmental programs." The "quality of human life" is said to be UNEP's central concern and its programs should enhance the total human habitat through studies of environmental problems having an immediate impact on man. Priority activities include:

the design and implementation of a Global Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS), and its component Global Resources Information Database (GRID);

the Regional Seas Program;

activities under its Environmental Law Program, including the negotiation of an international agreement on the control of transboundary movement of hazardous waste;

monitoring the implementation of the Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

implementing the Convention on Climate Change

implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity

UNEP's governing and policy-making body is a 58-member Council elected by the UN General Assembly. The Council reports, however, to the ECOSOC. UNEP participates in the Committee of International Development Institutions on the Environment (CIDIE) which is a mixed forum of UN and non-UN bodies for integrating environmental concerns. UNEP also coordinates the DOEM (Designated Officials on Environmental Matters). The DOEM is chaired by the Deputy Executive Director of UNEP and consists of an official in each of the UN organizations designated specifically to coordinate activities with the UNEP program. The UNEP Council consists of 16 seats for African States, 13 seats for Asian States, 6 seats for East European States, 10 seats for Latin American Sates, and 13 seats for West European and other States including the US. Since its inception, the US has contributed $747,344,000 directly to UNEP, approximately 26% of its total budget.

There are dozens of other international government organizations working to implement various components of the global environmental agenda. Before they are examined, however, let's examine the development and role of the primary non-government organizations.

Non-government organizations

As the UN tended to consolidate previous environmental efforts of various governments, the formation of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) brought together several previous efforts by non-government and quasi-government organizations. The IUCN was founded in 1948 by Sir Julian Huxley. Huxley also designed UNESCO (United Nations Education Scientific, and Cultural Organization) in 1946, and served as its first Director General. The IUCN extracted leaders from the British Fauna and Flora Preservation Society (FFPS) which had existed since 1903. Sir Peter Scott, who chaired the FFPS for nearly three decades, wrote "Since the Empire at that time covered about a quarter of the surface of the globe, it was a fair start on internationalizing the infant wildlife conservation movement." Scott also chaired the IUCN's Commission for Species Survival.

The IUCN is organized around six commissions: Ecology; Education and communication; Environmental law; Environmental strategy and planning; National parks and protected areas; and Species Survival.

The entire IUCN assembly convenes every three years to elect officers and approve the policy initiatives of the various commissions. More than 1300 scientists, government officials, and members attended the most recent assembly in Buenos Aires, Argentina in January 1994. Jay Hair, Chief Executive Officer of the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) was elected President.

Unique among NGOs, the IUCN membership includes (as of May, 1994) 68 sovereign nations, 100 government agencies, 550 non-government organizations, 53 international non-government organizations, and 35 non-voting affiliates. Its $53 million, 1993 budget includes a voluntary contribution from the U.S. State Department of $667,000 as well as unspecified cash contributions from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. International Development Agency (USAID). The IUCN maintains a "consultative" relationship with at least seven UN organizations, to which the US contributed a total of $293.5 million in 1993. The IUCN maintains similar relationships with the OAS and other international government organizations as well.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) was founded in 1961. (In 1987, the name was changed to the World Wide Fund for Nature, but the WWF acronym was retained.) Sir Julian Huxley and Max Nicholson were co-founders of the WWF which was created to provide public appeal for wildlife in order to raise funds for the activities of the IUCN. Nicholson was secretary to five postwar British foreign ministers, and in 1970 published The Environmental Revolution: A Guide for the New Masters of the World. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, has served as the organization's President since its inception. Recent rumors have emerged that he will soon step aside because of his advancing age. To supplement funding for the WWF and for the IUCN, the "1001 Club" was organized in 1971 by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Membership is restricted to 1001 members at any given time, and the initiation fee is $10,000 which goes into a trust to provide on-going revenues for WWF operations. The WWF claims 5.2 million supporters around the world in an international network of 28 affiliate and associate national organizations. Its annual budget is reported at $200,000,000.

The third organization in the international NGO triumvirate is the World Resources Institute (WRI), founded in 1982 by Russell E. Train, President of WWF-USA with substantial grants from the Rockerfeller Brothers Fund and the MacArthur Foundation. James Gustave Speth was appointed President and served there until his appointment to the Clinton/Gore transition team, from which he moved directly to head the United Nations Development Program. Speth's Chief Policy Analyst at WRI, Rafe Pomerance, moved to the U.S. State Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment, Health and Natural Resources. WRI Vice President, Jessica Tuchman Matthews, moved to Deputy Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs.

The WRI is a Washington, DC-based "think-tank" which publishes reams of policy statements on biodiversity, population control, climate change, energy, and technology issues. Kenton Miller, a prolific writer for WRI, was designated to coordinate Section 10 of the Global Biodiversity Assessment, a document required by the Convention on Biological Diversity, authorized by UNEP, and funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

The inter-connectedness of these three NGOs and the international government organizations becomes unmistakeably apparent in three public documents that are, in fact, the basis for the global environmental agenda. Those publications are: Global Biodiversity Strategy, published by WRI, IUCN, and UNEP, in 1992; Conserving the World's Biological Diversity, IUCN, WWF, and the World Bank, 1991; and Caring for the Earth: A Strategy for Sustainable Living, IUCN, UNEP, WWF, 1991.

It is the IUCN and its NGO cohorts that initiate the strategies, which are then fanned into public awareness by hundreds of affiliated and associated national NGOs, then translated into official, legal proposals that are adopted by official government organizations that are headed by former NGO officials. Policies are then frequently administered by contractual arrangements with national NGOs that are affiliated with the IUCN or the WWF. Never has there been such a complex, or effective mechanism for advancing a paradigm around the world. Nor has there ever been such a massive transformation of society undertaken without military action. Sadly, most of the world's people have no idea the transformation is underway.

(Editor's note: Five sections of the "peer-review" draft of the Global Biodiversity Assessment have been "obtained" and are currently being summarized. Section 10 is now available and other sections will be available in the next few weeks. Watch for new information and reports as the documents are analyzed.)

United States Contributions to International Organizations (Source: U.S. State Department)