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- The U.N. Convention
to Combat Desertification was ratified
by the U.S. Senate on October
18, but few Senators yet know that it has
been ratified. Senator Craig
Thomas (R-WY) introduced a package of 34 treaties,
all of which were
ratified by a show of hands -- no recorded vote.
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- Initially, Senator Thomas'
office told callers that the
Senator had nothing to do with the
ratification. On December 8, his office
called to explain that Senator
Thomas just happened to be on the Senate
Floor late in the afternoon of
October 18 -- and was asked by the leadership
to handle procedurally,
the package of treaties. Senator Thomas has asked
the Foreign Relations
Committee to explain how, and why, the Desertification
Treaty was
included in the package.
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- At the recent climate change talks in the Hague, Senator
Larry Craig (R-ID) said the treaty had not been ratified, until corrected
by one of his staff. Phone calls to Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN), and
other
Senators, caught staffers off guard: Nobody knew how their boss
voted on
the ratification. They could not know -- there was no recorded
vote.
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- This
treaty was signed by the Clinton administration
in 1994. It has been
locked up in the Foreign Relations Committee since.
Normally, treaties
of such monumental importance are debated in committee
and then
forwarded to the Senate floor for further debate and disposition.
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- Not this time. The
treaty appeared in a package of 34
treaties -- most of which were
single-issue treaties with single nations,
dealing with stolen
vehicles, criminals, and the like. The Desertification
Treaty, however,
is not a single-issue treaty with a single nation.
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- This treaty is one of several
environmental treaties
that emerged from the 1992 U.N. Conference on
Environment and Development
in Rio de Janeiro. One of those treaties,
the Convention on Climate Change,
was ratified in 1992. The Convention
on Biological Diversity failed ratification
in 1994. The Convention to
Combat Desertification was skillfully maneuvered
through the Senate to
avoid the public reaction which killed the Convention
on Biological
Diversity.
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- The Desertification Treaty claims jurisdiction over 70%
of the
earth's land area -- virtually all of the land that is not covered
by
the Convention on Biological Diversity. Moreover, this new treaty creates
a structure through which all other environmental treaties are supposed
to be integrated under a common United Nations implementation regime. A
companion treaty is now being developed by the U.N. Commission on Water
for the 21st Century. The United Nations is, in fact, creating the
structure
in international law and, through its extensive
bureaucracies, to control
the use of all natural resources on
earth.
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- The
U.S. Senate ratified the treaty on October 18, 2000
-- whether or not
it knew what it was doing. On November 17, the Clinton
administration
delivered the ratification documents to the United Nations.
The United
States is now bound by the international law that claims the
power to
dictate land use in 70% of the earth's land.
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- The name of the treaty implies
that it is concerned about
deserts -- in fact, it is concerned about
all land use. To combat desertification,
the treaty seeks to prevent
land use that its enforcers think may lead
to desertification.
Converting forests to pasture, for example, or pasture
to row crops, or
crop land to subdivisions, are all uses that may lead
to
desertification, according to literature produced by the United
Nations.
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- There is no distinction between federal land and privately
owned land when it comes to land use under the jurisdiction of the U.N.
The U.N. sees its role to be the establishment of policy -- it is up to
the participating nations to see that the policy is implemented. The
recent
rash of land acquisition measures promoted by the administration
and Congress
seeks to get more land under federal ownership. The vast
expansion of regulatory
control over land use by all federal agencies
makes it easier for the United
States to comply with its international
obligations under a variety of
international treaties. This new treaty
extends even further the U.S. obligation
to control land use.
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- According to the
treaty itself, no reservations can be
included in its ratification
(Article 37). The Resolution of Ratification
adopted by the Senate
contains several reservations -- all of which will
be ignored by the
United Nations.
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- Withdrawal from the treaty cannot even begin until after
three
years of participation -- and then another year must pass before
withdrawal is recognized by the U.N. -- assuming, of course, that there
is some desire in the Senate to withdraw.
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- _____
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- Henry Lamb is the
executive vice president of the Environmental
Conservation Organization
and chairman of Sovereignty International.
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