$1,325 per American family for U.N. bureaucrats
The NGO Major Group Organizing Partners have finalized their key document for the Rio+20 Summit. “TheFutureWeWant” outlines the common vision for “sustainable development” throughout the planet sought by those nongovernmental organizations – mostly social and environmental activist groups. There are many noble sentiments in its 283 statements. There also is much that raises serious concerns. “Sustainable,” “sustainability” and “sustainable development” appear in the text an astounding 390 times. Like “abracadabra,” these amorphous words are supposed to transform even corrupt societies into Gardens of Eden under United Nations auspices. They will use less, pollute less, be sustainable, get along and save species and the entire planet from their worst enemy: human beings.
The affirmations, resolutions and guidelines are fascinating, but the funding mechanism is even more eye-opening. Results of the U.N. conference in Rio de Janeiro, which concluded Friday, calls for annual “donations” from the European Union and Annex II (Kyoto Protocol) countries amounting to 0.7 percent of their gross national product (GNP). With the combined GNP of contributing nations totaling about $45 trillion in 2010, the transfers would add up to $315 billion per year, or $3.2 trillion per decade.
President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had previously committed the United States to provide $105 billion annually, based on our $15 trillion GNP. World Bank data for 2010 put U.S. per capita GNP at $47,340 – meaning each American family of four would pay $1,325 a year. That may seem like chump change compared to Obamacare or the Obama stimulus. But over a decade, U.S. citizens would be required to contribute well over $1 trillion to U.N. sustainability schemes.
To oversee this unprecedented wealth transfer to U.N. bureaucrats and NGO activists, architects of “The FutureWeWant” would establish “an intergovernmental process” to assess financial needs; consider the effectiveness, consistency and synergies of existing instruments and frameworks; evaluate additional initiatives; and prepare reports on financing strategies. Implementation of this grand scheme would be handled by an intergovernmental committee of 30 “experts” who would be accountable to no one, except perhaps the U.N. secretary-general.
The document reassuringly suggests that “aid architecture has significantly changed in the current decade,” and “fighting corruption and illicit financial flows [has become] a priority.” Diogenes would search in vain for evidence of this.
Indeed, the very idea of still more aid must be questioned. “Has more than $1 trillion in development assistance over the last several decades made African people better off?” economist Dambisa Moyo asks in her book, “Dead Aid.” Her answer is an emphatic no.
