SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, AGENDA 21 AND PRINCE CHARLES

By Joan Veon
August 13, 2004
NewsWithViews.com

It has been ten years since I have been writing and studying the now established environmental philosophy of sustainable development. I was first confronted with it at the United Nations Conference on Population and Development-UNCED in Cairo, Egypt in 1994. Sustainable development was a core philosophy behind the Programme of Action called "Agenda 21" at the 1992 United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development-UNCED, now dubbed the "Rio Earth Summit."

In Rio, conference Secretary-General Maurice Strong stated,

Agenda 21 - still stands as the most comprehensive, most far-reaching and, if implemented, the most effective programme of international action ever sanctioned by the international community. It is not a final and complete action programme, but one which must continue to evolve.
Sustainable development has continued to evolve as that of protecting the world's resources while its true agenda is to control the world's resources. Communism also has control at its core and it also is evolving. I remember asking former UN Secretary-General Boutros-Boutros Ghali what he meant by "change" and he told me that he was introducing "constant change" as a way to continue the evolutionary processes begun in Rio.

Under the evolutionary process which Agenda 21 set in motion, sustainable development has become like a prism. Every time you turn it, you get a different "color." The sustainable development prism includes the social, political, economic and environmental factors. Until Rio, the phrase sustainable development had not appeared in any prior UN documents, papers or reference books.

It should be noted that Agenda 21 sets up the global infrastructure needed to manage, count, and control all of the world's assets. Included are the forests, fresh water, agricultural lands, deserts, pastures, rangelands, farmers' fields, oceans and inland waterways, marine environment, marine life, cities, housing, sewer and solid wastes, methods of production, air, pollution, biotechnology-every aspect of living-farming, production and manufacturing, research and medicine, etc., along with you and I. Today everything is sustainable: sustainable water, sustainable forests, sustainable markets, sustainable agriculture, etc.

Through advanced technology such as the Geographic Information System (GIS), the control, count and management of the earth's assets is being implemented. Scientists have told me that the GIS satellites can measure the quality of soil anywhere in the earth to a depth of three inches. Furthermore, it can tell you what kind of birds and insects are in which kind of tree. It can also see you and me sleeping in our beds and living in our houses-ever wonder why leaded paint was such a problem? The UN calls this transparency while you and I call it invasion of privacy.

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