BUILDING A BRIDGE TO NOWHERE BUT OBLIVION: USG Funding Of UNCLOS & UN Environment Program Will Undermine US Sovereignty

BUILDING A BRIDGE TO NOWHERE BUT OBLIVION **


The UNCLOS has not been properly researched and scientifically investigated by the U.S. Executive and Legislative branches. Neither have these organs of U.S. government closely examined whether the UNCLOS's environmental regulatory rules can: 1) advance sound environmental policy; 2) ensure objective, balanced enforcement free from the political influence of special interests’ having philosophical/political and economic leanings antithetical to free markets and the protection of private property rights; and 3) guarantee that the Rule of Law, NOT the Rule by Law, is the order of the day - i.e., that Rule of Law is NOT undermined, circumvented or usurped to support a system of unaccountable supranational power where top-down rather than bottom-up Global Governance reigns.


As a result of inadequate executive and legislative branch research and oversight of the UNCLOS and its relationship to the burgeoning United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), U.S. policymakers have remained largely unaware of how the U.S. State Department continues to fund and seek future funding for these organizations/institutions - despite the fact that such funding can be and, in some cases, is actually being employed against U.S. national sovereign interests. For one thing, the UNEP is the multilateral environmental treaty-making machine of the UN, which the European Union, specifically, France and Germany, aim to enlarge and reform into an International Environmental Organization with vast powers to facilitate global environmental regulatory and economic governance over U.S. affairs, based on other than free market, private property, rule of law and scientific principles.


It is therefore surprising that the U.S. State Department has actually funded the UNEP in the neighborhood of $42.17 million from 2004-2007 ($10.94 million – 2004, $10.91 million – 2005, $10.16 million – 2006, $10.16 million – 2007), has estimated that actual 2008 UNEP funding will be $10.42 million, and has recently requested additional 2009 UNEP funding in the amount of $9.52 million – for a total of $19.94 ($20) more million, for a grand total of actual, estimated and projected UNEP funding for 2004-2009 of $62.11 million! [1] Adding insult to injury, the U.S. State Department has also, on at least two occasions, sought federal budget line funding for the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and the International Seabed Authority (ISBA). These funding requests were submitted FY 2006 $3.1 million (ITLOS - $1.9 million + ISBA - $1.2 million) and just recently FY 2009 $4.9 million (ITLOS – $3.6 million + ISBA - $1.3 million)! [2]


What is the sound rationale justifying the U.S. Department of State's appropriation of monies to the UNCLOS [a treaty not yet ratified], to the tune of approximately $5 million dollars? If the monies are being allocated to the UNCLOS, where other treaty parties hostile to U.S. interests are 1) refocusing and reshaping the UNCLOS into a more communal, centralized social system and 2) planning to utilize the interrelationship between the UNCLOS and the UNEP to promote the development of a global governance system that compromises U.S. national sovereignty, are we not undermining ourselves by building a “Bridge That Leads to Nowhere”, but oblivion?


**[THE ITSSD WISHES TO THANK CLIFF KINCAID OF AMERICA'S SURVIVAL (http://www.usasurvival.org ) FOR BRINGING THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT'S PROPOSED FY 2009 BUDGET LINE FUNDING OF THESE UNCLOS BODIES TO OUR ATTENTION]


[1] See U.S. State Department “Summary and Highlights - International Affairs Function 150 Budget Requests”, ‘Contributions to International Organizations’, FY 2009 at p. 92, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/100014.pdf ; FY 2008 at p. 109, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/80151.pdf ; FY 2007 at p. 88, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/60297.pdf ; FY 2006 at p. 90, at: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/41913.pdf .

[2] See U.S. State Department “Summary and Highlights - International Affairs Function 150 Budget Requests”, ‘Contributions to International Organizations’, FY 2006, supra at p. 92; FY 2009, supra at p. 96.