Here is an excerpt from the pre­am­ble of the doc­u­ment Agen­da 21:

“Land… can­not be treat­ed as an ordi­nary asset, con­trolled by indi­vid­u­als and sub­ject to the pres­sures and inef­fi­cien­cies of the market.

Pri­vate land own­er­ship is also a prin­ci­pal instru­ment of accu­mu­la­tion and con­cen­tra­tion of wealth and there­fore con­tributes to social injus­tice; if unchecked, it may become a major obsta­cle in the plan­ning and imple­men­ta­tion of devel­op­ment schemes…

Pub­lic con­trol of land use is there­fore indis­pens­able to its pro­tec­tion as an asset and the achieve­ment of the long-term objec­tives of human set­tle­ment poli­cies and strategies.”

By Hen­ry Lamb, posthu­mous­ly, I cer­tain­ly do miss his men­tor­ing and advice.

“Any­one who reads Chap­ter 7 of Agen­da 21, and then reads their local com­pre­hen­sive land use plan will imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize that most of the pro­vi­sions of the local land use plan come direct­ly from Agen­da 21.

More often than not, the elect­ed offi­cials who adopt these plans have nev­er read Agen­da 21, and many have nev­er even heard of the U.N. doc­u­ment, signed by Pres­i­dent George H. W. Bush in 1992.

The facil­i­ta­tors and pro­fes­sion­al plan­ners have heard about Agen­da 21, but fre­quent­ly claim that the plan they are work­ing on has noth­ing to do with the U.N. or Agen­da 21. Don’t believe it for one minute.

Gary Lawrence, for­mer Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Sus­tain­able Com­mu­ni­ties at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, and Chief Plan­ner for the City of Seat­tle, told an audi­ence in Lon­don that:

” In the case of the U.S., our local author­i­ties are engaged in plan­ning process­es con­sis­tent with LA21 [Local Agen­da 21] but there is lit­tle inter­est in using the LA21 brand…. So, we call our process­es some­thing else, such as com­pre­hen­sive plan­ning, growth man­age­ment or smart growth.”

In com­mu­ni­ty after com­mu­ni­ty, the same sce­nario is repeat­ed. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, through the EPA or the Depart­ment of Com­merce or the Depart­ment of Inte­ri­or, offers spe­cial grants to com­mu­ni­ties for the pur­pose of devel­op­ing a vision for a green­er future, and a plan to con­vert the vision into reality.

Typ­i­cal­ly, the local gov­ern­ment will find a pri­vate con­sul­tant to “facil­i­tate” the process. The facil­i­ta­tor will iden­ti­fy a local “steer­ing com­mit­tee,” care­ful­ly cho­sen from peo­ple who rep­re­sent var­i­ous seg­ments of the com­mu­ni­ty, all of whom are known in advance to be sym­pa­thet­ic to the goals of Agen­da 21.

Typ­i­cal­ly, the advi­so­ry group will meet in pri­vate to lay out the frame­work for the process and the goals for the fin­ished prod­uct. When this is achieved, pub­lic meet­ings are sched­uled to give the appear­ance of pub­lic input and own­er­ship. Rarely are these meet­ings ever pub­li­cized ade­quate­ly to attract the pri­vate prop­er­ty own­ers who are most direct­ly affect­ed. Care is tak­en to see that mem­bers of local envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions and social jus­tice orga­ni­za­tions con­sti­tute the major­i­ty of attendees.

These pub­lic meet­ings are said to be “the vision­ing process.” The pro­ce­dures vary slight­ly from com­mu­ni­ty to com­mu­ni­ty, depend­ing upon the facil­i­ta­tor. Remark­ably, how­ev­er, the “vision” in every com­mu­ni­ty con­tains essen­tial­ly the same ele­ments: restrict­ed auto traf­fic; bike trails; walk­a­ble neigh­bor­hoods; inte­grat­ed hous­ing; high den­si­ty urban bound­ary zones; con­ser­va­tion areas; green belts; and much more — direct­ly from Agen­da 21.

Once the vision doc­u­ment is com­plete, the next step is to con­vert it into a Com­pre­hen­sive land use plan, adopt­ed by local elect­ed offi­cials in the form of an ordi­nance that is enforce­able with fines and oth­er penal­ties. The plans are nec­es­sar­i­ly so long and com­plex that few peo­ple ever read them, oth­er than the pro­fes­sion­al plan­ners and enforce­ment offi­cials. Many, if not most, of these com­pre­hen­sive plans incor­po­rate many, if not most, of the codes devel­oped by the Inter­na­tion­al Codes Coun­cil. Here are some of the codes:

Inter­na­tion­al Build­ing Code (Inter­na­tion­al Code Coun­cil)

Inter­na­tion­al Res­i­den­tial Code

Inter­na­tion­al Fire Code

Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Con­ser­va­tion Code

Inter­na­tion­al Pri­vate Sewage Dis­pos­al Code

Inter­na­tion­al Mechan­i­cal Code

Inter­na­tion­al Fuel Gas Code

Inter­na­tion­al Wild­land-Urban Inter­face Code

ICC Per­for­mance Code (for­Build­ings and Facilities)

Inter­na­tion­al Exist­ing Build­ing Code

Inter­na­tion­al Prop­er­ty Main­te­nance Code

Inter­na­tion­al Zon­ing Code

Inter­na­tion­al Green Con­struc­tion Code

Here’s a sam­ple of what to expect. From Chap­ter 2 of the Inter­na­tion­al Green Con­struc­tion Code:

CONSERVATION AREA. Land des­ig­nat­ed by the juris­dic­tion or by state or fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, as a result of a com­mu­ni­ty plan­ning process, as appro­pri­ate for con­ser­va­tion from devel­op­ment because of the land pos­sess­ing nat­ur­al val­ues impor­tant to the com­mu­ni­ty includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to wildlife habi­tat, for­est or oth­er sig­nif­i­cant veg­e­ta­tion, steep slopes, ground water recharge area, ripar­i­an cor­ri­dor or wetland.

DAYLIGHT SATURATION. The per­cent­age of day­time hours through­out the year when not less than 28 foot-can­dles (300 lux) of nat­ur­al light is pro­vid­ed at a height of 30 inch­es (762 mm) above the floor.

DEMAND RESPONSE, AUTOMATED (AUTO-DR). Ful­ly Auto­mat­ed Demand Response ini­ti­at­ed by a sig­nal from a util­i­ty or oth­er appro­pri­ate enti­ty, pro­vid­ing ful­ly-auto­mat­ed con­nec­tiv­i­ty to cus­tomer ener­gy end-use con­trol strategies.

This is a tiny sam­ple of the rules and reg­u­la­tions buried deep with­in the inno­cent-sound­ing com­pre­hen­sive land use plans adopt­ed by unaware local offi­cials to achieve the polit­i­cal­ly-cor­rect label of “sus­tain­able community.”

These plans should be reject­ed, not sim­ply because they arise from the Unit­ed Nations, but because they infringe per­son­al free­dom and pri­vate prop­er­ty rights. The imple­men­ta­tion of these com­pre­hen­sive land use plans effec­tive­ly trans­fers to gov­ern­ment the right to dic­tate to indi­vid­u­als what kind of mate­ri­als must be used in con­struct­ing their pri­vate­ly owned homes. The Auto-DR pro­vi­sion defined above actu­al­ly gives gov­ern­ment the right to dic­tate the tem­per­a­ture in your home, and the abil­i­ty to enforce it.

This is mad­ness! This is sus­tain­able devel­op­ment! This is Agen­da 21!

Local Tea Par­ties, 9.12 groups, and prop­er­ty rights orga­ni­za­tions must learn about Agenda21, and exact­ly what their local vision­ing state­ments and local com­pre­hen­sive land use plans con­tain. Many groups are form­ing study com­mit­tees to ana­lyze their local plans by sec­tion, and then report back to the entire group. This way, not every indi­vid­ual has to read the entire plan.

If this rush to obliv­ion is going to be stopped, it is up to pri­vate cit­i­zens to get informed, get involved, and help get into office only those peo­ple who tru­ly respect the Con­sti­tu­tion and the indi­vid­ual free­dom it is sup­posed to guarantee.”

2005 © Hen­ry Lamb

BCN Note:

Authur Lee, an Amer­i­can patri­ot and colonist in 1775 said, “The right of prop­er­ty is the guardian of every oth­er right, and to deprive peo­ple of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty.”

Dan Peter­son, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor for the Coali­tion for Prop­er­ty Rights (CPR) said this and I close,

“Is Agen­da 21 the great­est threat to pri­vate prop­er­ty own­er­ship, prop­er­ty rights, and lib­er­ty today?It could be. For years it has flown under the radar, and now urgent­ly needs crit­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tion, pub­lic expo­sure, and eval­u­a­tion. One thing is cer­tain; it has cost bil­lions over the years and brought our nation under an enor­mous bur­den of reg­u­la­tion and restriction.”

The Bradley Coun­ty Com­mis­sion vot­ing to imple­ment Inter­na­tion­al Build­ing Codes is a scary game to play and sets the stage for a region­al growth plan.

Not only are we con­form­ing to
the Unit­ed Nations Agen­da 21 plan we are giv­ing away our prop­er­ty rights as well as our sovereignty.

Com­plete text of Chap­ter 7 of Agen­da 21,

(Pro­mot­ing Sus­tain­able Human Set­tle­ment Devel­op­ment)

OR, (Pro­mot­ing Sus­tain­able Human Set­tle­ment Devel­op­ment)