Part 3 Encyclopia of global Governance

The slow march to global tyranny begins

The campaign to establish a framework of global control began in earnest after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. The idea of human caused global warming became the tip of the spear with an expanded sphere of influence such as social and economic concerns, the threat to biodiversity, water quality, social inequality, human migration, over-population, public health, resource depletion and indigenous peoples’ rights all waiting to be introduced by way of the concept of Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development is defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Development is seen as the sum total of the worlds’ economic activities which, must be transformed through the application of the concept of Sustainability. The control of the Global economy would then be in the hands of the Network to determine what is sustainable and what is not. Some say, as did Maurice Strong, that the middleclass lifestyle is not sustainable. The Fabian Society believes that free market capitalism is not sustainable.

In the words of Christiana Figueres, Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.”

Here is how it is done

To create the necessary framework for global governance all levels of nation states’ governments were engaged, with special attention paid to regional and municipal governments. “Think globally, act locally” became the motto. The UN created an organization named the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) to engage with local municipal and regional governments directly to provide guidelines, tools and information to advise on policy in support of the global agenda. The concept of Sustainable Development began to enter public discourse through the Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth” report and the Stockholm UN Conference on the Human Environment, but it was formally introduced and popularized in 1987 through the Brundtland Report “Our Common Future”.

Canada, in 1990, established the International Institute for Sustainable Development and began publishing the “Earth Negotiations Bulletins”. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio consolidated the concept into the international agenda via the UN Agenda 21.

Over time, the UN General Assembly became frustrated over how little progress had been made in implementing Agenda 21 and as a result the General Assembly in 2015, at the UN Summit on Sustainable Development, adopted Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development which set 17 specific Sustainable Development goals all to be achieved by 2030 through a process of set targets. Canada adopted it the same year.

The most recent to be adopted was the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP). The implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals is widely characterized as a novel and unique form of global governance through specific steering effects such as providing a shared global language and normative framework that shifts how development is discussed. The SDGs function as a soft governance mechanism intended to orchestrate the activities of a diverse range of global actors. The UN uses the Goals to align the work of hundreds of international organizations and multi-stakeholder partnerships toward a common vision. The use of 231 global “Indicators” creates a politics of quantification where progress data is submitted to the UN and is published annually in the UN Secretary’s SDG progress report and the SDG Tracker, a web-based interactive dash board.

In addition to the UN SDGs, the UN Global Compact and leading financial institutions, in a joint initiative, came up with the concept of ESGs (Environmental, Social, and Governance), which was published in its 2004 report “Who cares Wins”. This set out a legal framework for corporate governance via ESG integration. Businesses are monitored for their compliance with UN SDGs.