Who is Maurice Strong?

National Review, Sept 1, 1997 by Ronald Bailey

Yellowstone has been designated a "World Heritage Site." These Sites are natural settings or cultural monuments recognized by the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as having "outstanding universal value." Sites are designated under a Convention ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1973, and it is possible to place such sites on a "List of World Heritage Sites in Danger."

In this case, a mining company wanted to construct a gold mine outside the boundaries of Yellowstone. The normal environmental review of the project's impact was still proceeding under U.S. law. But a group of environmentalist NGOs opposed to the mine were not content to wait for that review to take its course. They asked that members of the World Heritage Committee come to Yellowstone to hold public hearings. George Frampton, the Clinton Administration's Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, wrote to the WHC saying: "The Secretary [Bruce Babbitt] and the National Park Service have clearly expressed strong reservations with the New World Mine proposal." Frampton added: "We believe that a potential danger to the values of the Park and surrounding waters and fisheries exists and that the committee should be informed that the property as inscribed on the . . . List is in danger." Four officials of the WHC duly came to Yellowstone and held hearings. And at its December 1995 meeting in Berlin, the Committee obligingly voted to list Yellowstone as a "World Heritage Site in Danger."

"It was, in my opinion, a blatantly political act," declared Rep. Barbara Cubin (R., Wyo.) during congressional hearings about the listing. "It was done to draw attention, public reaction, public response, and public pressure to see that the mine wasn't developed." Jeremy Rabkin, a Cornell political scientist, agrees that the international listing of such sites "provides an international forum through which to put pressure on U.S. policy."

Would the mine really have endangered Yellowstone? We'll never know. The environmental-impact statement was never issued, and, under pressure, the mining company accepted a $65-million federal buyout plus a trade for unspecified federal lands somewhere else. Thus, even with no enforcement power, this UN dependency was able to make land-use policy for the United States.

These events prompted Rep. Don Young (R., Alaska) to introduce the American Land Sovereignty Act. With 174 co-sponsors to date, the Act aims to "preserve sovereignty of the United States over public lands and . . . to preserve State sovereignty and private property rights in non-federal lands surrounding those public lands." Congress would have to approve on a case-by-case basis land designations made pursuant to any international agreements.

But is U.S. sovereignty really in danger? In an interview, Strong dismissed Young's anxieties. "I do not share his concern. It is no abdication of sovereignty to exercise it in company with others, and when you're dealing with global issues that's what you have to do." He continues: "If you put yourself in a larger unit, of course, you get some advantages and you give up some of your freedom. And that's what's happening in Europe, that the states of Europe have decided that overall they're better off to create a structure in which they give up some of their national rights and exercise them collectively through the Union."