Yule is the only mayor in Hawke’s Bay to back a five-council amalgamation of the sort that was stingingly dumped in Wellington earlier this month and slowly evaporated in Northland. A final proposal for a merger in Hawke’s Bay will be voted on in September.
Agenda 21 is a non-binding, voluntarily implemented action plan of the United Nations with regard to sustainable development. It is a product of the Earth Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. (1)
This agenda has been embedded in New Zealand’s institutional framework for over 20 years, manifesting itself through such buzzwords as “sustainable development”, “biodiversity”, “smart growth”, “waste minimization”, and “population control”.
Through this agenda a foreign group like the United Nations effectively dictates policy through our central and local government and will ultimately siphon money from our local and central government to fund their master plan involving the global redistribution of resources.
As Commonwealth Local Government Forum chair, Yule told Botswana president Lieutenant General Seretse Khama Ian Khama, United Nations Development Programme administrator Helen Clark, forum secretary general Carl Wright, Botswana Association of Local Authority president Mpho Moruakgomo, and the large room full of conference delegates, that:
“ . . it was encouraging that there is a formal agreement that all levels of government, including the subnational, have a role in implementing the sustainable development goals, that there is support for addressing the issues of capacity and resources, and that a dedicated sustainable development goal on cities and human settlements is proposed.
The forum represents local government at Commonwealth level, including to the Commonwealth Secretary-General and at meetings of Commonwealth Heads of Government and with other Commonwealth partners. It also makes written submission to consultations and other policy development forums. (2)
Sustainable development goals are a new, universal set of goals, targets and indicators that UN member states will be expected to use to frame their agendas and political policies over the next 15 years.
They follow, and expand on, the millennium development goals, which were agreed by governments in 2000, and are due to expire at the end of this year.
The eight millennium development goals – reduce poverty and hunger; achieve universal education; promote gender equality; reduce child and maternal deaths; combat HIV, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; develop global partnerships – failed to consider the root causes of poverty, or gender inequality, or the holistic nature of development. What are the proposed 17 sustainable development goals?
1) End poverty in all its forms everywhereThe Hastings mayor who is on a salary of $120,000 is mostly away from Hastings working on his other jobs being the president of Local Government New Zealand, as well as Commonwealth Local Government Forum chair.
2) End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture
3) Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages
4) Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
5) Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
6) Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
7) Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
8) Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all
9) Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation
10) Reduce inequality within and among countries
11) Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
12) Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
13) Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts (taking note of agreements made by the UNFCCC forum)
14) Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
15) Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss
16) Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
17) Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development. (3)
For those who think local government is all about roads, water, sewage, parks, libraries, and building consents, think again.
Merger mayor Lawrence Yule appears to think that Hawke’s Bay ratepayers have a further obligation to end poverty and hunger, to promote education and gender equality, to promote sustainable energy and industrialisation, to reduce inequality, to make cities and towns inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, to combat climate change, to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, manage forests, combat desertification, provide access to justice for all, and so on.
Local government in Hawke's Bay would have to be much bigger, and therefore, much more costly, to take on all of that.
When voting in September, Hawke’s Bay residents should be very careful in choosing whether or not to endorse the five-council amalgamation that the largely absentee Hastings mayor Lawrence Yule is promoting.
Sources
1. Agenda 21, https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf
2. Commonwealth Local Government Forum Conference 2015. http://www.cvent.com/events/commonwealth-local-government-conference-2015/event-summary-7a7456d65b9a41a8924127af31399eaa.aspx
3. Sustainable development goals. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics/sustainabledevelopmentgoals
8 comments:
Yule Tide Greetings from Agenda 21
Bun fight in Botswana sounds a great way to spend a winter away from the cold winds of reality New Zealand, especially when those ignoramus voters in the Wellington region quite obviously do not know what is good for them.
Agenda 21 may be “a non binding voluntarily implemented action plan of the U.N.” but how long is the word voluntarily going to remain a part of the process when its ultimate aim of being able to dictate UN policy on a world wide scale? One can see the reaction of an envious “Casca,” or rather an envious Lenin, on how World domination can be achieved by “sustainable development”. You can bet your bottom dollar that sustainable will be the key to locking the door finally shut, on any democratic idea allowing a vote on this issue once it becomes final UN policy.
As Mike says New Zealand has imbedded Agenda 21., 20 years ago, without as much as a hint of a vote by the people of this country. If this shows anything about the apathetic nature of our population, it certainly emphasis the old adage “You get the government you deserve”.
Mayor Yule’s address to the Forum implies that New Zealand has already subscribed wholeheartedly to this “formal” agreement. Which on the basis of Mike’s information, sounds very much like an indigenous welfare grab by those who by virtue, (I use the word with some reservation) Have blatantly lived, and are still living since independence, as democratic one party States on the charity of Western Nations.
As for the 17 “Sustainable Development Goals”, from memory this does sound like an echo from the establishment of Communism in Russia after 1917 (Perhaps there is some significance in the number 17 which might please Lenin lying in the splendour of Red Square).
These are goals that appeal to the young socialists, to the Greens both old and young, and those to who continue to float the banner of humanitarianism, knowing full well it is someone else who will have to foot the bill.
But to most of us it sounds very much like an OWN GOAL!
Brian
Some people think communism disappeared with the end of the USSR but it just morphed into 'Sustainable Development.'
Agree . The NZ Local Body "kings & queens" need to get their home front in order first.
Mike Butler exposes the bones of idealistic/ideology-driven collectivism's eternal struggle to dominate the pragmatic personal self-interest which (genetically) drives us all. This latter translates as individual responsibility for self-preservation through rational analysis of real world situations and democratic representation thereof in personal, local, regional and national government. In contrast, group-thinking idealists seek to impose their world-view through totalitarianism, ie legally-imposed central planning.
Agenda 21's (originally) "27 principles" were drafted at the behest (and pocket) of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) by six globalised Enviro-NGOs well before Rio'92; the "Earth Summit" was merely the stage for selling it to gullible or politically-susceptible “public representatives”, including those of the so-called democratic west. The Earth Summit did not produce it so much as, in all innocence and ignorance (or wilful intent, take your pick) ratifying it.
Those 27 principles are accessible at < http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-1annex1.htm >. As can be seen, they are a recipe for a centrally-planned and imposed Global Socialist Government, with that underlying intent wrapped in green drag and "fairness" whereby the achieving west would be stripped of its "excess" wealth for forced re-distibution to the rest (by eg rationing of carbon footprints and fuel allocations). How future generations are to be compared with the likes of Ethiopia for judgement is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, population would be controlled and progress (innovation for more efficient use of resources) actively precluded. Such a world-view ignores the potential of personal betterment-driven (and freedom/democracy-enabled) innovation to overcome all obstacles, if only allowed to do so.
The 17 "sustainable development goals" Mike mentions are a sub-set of Agenda 21's 27 principles considered "suitable" for perpetuating the (failed) Millennium Development Goals. When I last looked, governments had coughed up only around $3 billion of the (extra) $100 million they promised to give the UN for MDG.
Close consideration reveals that "sustainability" is antipathetic to economic growth, indeed was devised specifically to oppose it. Refer it's foundation in Brundtland : any interpretation would necessarily be wholly subjective and anti-natural, and require centralised power and force to implement. And regardless of how it is defined, any implementation will suit the ideology of the implementers. But when Lot's wife looked back from the (entirely natural and genetically-driven) search for a better life to the "safety and security" of slavery in Egypt, she "turned into a pillar of salt", ie lost her humanity/life.
American architect-driven ("visionary", "idealism/ideology-driven") town planners led by Portland and the APA devised the construct known there as "Smart (sic) Growth", as a way of empowering them to play at “designer cities”, using other people’s money, property, lives, lifestyles and futures. It was imported "off the hook" to NZ (and the rest of the west, and those influenced by western institutions such as development banks) by the ARC as a response to RMA requirement for Regional Policy Statements and Growth Strategies, and remains with us today, re-labelled "Compact (and forcibly re-centralised) Cities". The APA claims it is the epitome of "sustainable development" but its claims are nowhere credibly substantiated, whereas there are many credible arguments, articles, reports, books etc which strongly indicate that urban compaction wastes existing resources, drives up prices and overloads infrastructures designed for traditional densities, while achieving little if any (net) environmental gains.
(continued from above)
Mike's claim of higher per capita cost of regional "integration" may well be appropriate to his article, but only hints at the associated massive and artificial empowerment of the idealistic Yin over the pragmatic Yang in urban development today. Such wanton disregard for (indeed, opposition to) the need to eternally (re-)balance the two as natural evolution progresses is condemning the west's cities to social and economic negativity, for no real (net) environmental gain. But what does that matter to those empowered by such "stop-the-worldism"???
Arguments for centralisation always stress "savings" but never, in their resistance to any change in the formula which empowers them, address the consequential loss in freedoms expressible through real democracy. Nor do they address the or risk that promoters of "the only game in town" (ie theirs) will actively ignore costs and their incidence, the detriment to net productivity (prosperity), and the "unintended" consequences and detrimental feedback loops resulting from actively opposing the ongoing (re-) balancing of Yin and Yang.
I would think that "sustainable development" would include not having 10 children when you cannot afford them - and even when you can afford them. It is funny that many people who talk of "sustainable development" have never heard of Buckminster Fuller and the concept "spaceship earth". --- Bruce
all of this is related to the new world order that john key and Helen clark have signed us up to. you only have to look at increasing unemployment world wide,increasing marginalisaton of blacks in usa,the continuing purchase of our own dairy industry by china and all the other sell outs by successive nz governments to know the agenda 21 will not do normal kiwis any good.
god forbid that we should attempt to re-organise our society to be "sustainable" - no civilisation in the past ever did such a stupid thing - instead they used up resources until the resources ran out, then their civilisation collapsed leaving a deforested desert in its wake ... babylon, egypt, greece, rome ... why should we do anything different?
as for "waste minimisation" - what nonsense - we should follow the example of other countries and allow the lower classes to live at our rubbish dumps where they can gain useful self employment in the recycling industry
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