The New Media Journal | Document: UN Goal to Become Rule-Maker on Global Environment

The New Media Journal | Document: UN Goal to Become Rule-Maker on Global Environment: "Environmentalism should be regarded on the same level with religion 'as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity,' according to a paper written two years ago to influence the future strategy of the United Nations Environmental Program, the world's would-be environmental watchdog.

The purpose of the paper, put together after an unpublicized day-long session in Switzerland by some of the world's top environmental bureaucrats: to argue for a new and unprecedented effort to move environmental concerns to 'the center of political and economic decision-making' around the world — and perhaps not coincidentally, expand the influence and reach of UNEP at the tables of world power, as a rule-maker and potential supervisor of the New Environmental Order.

The positions argued in that paper now appear to be much closer at hand; many of them are embedded in a four-year strategy document for UNEP taking effect next year, in the immediate wake of the much-touted, 11-day Copenhagen conference on 'climate change,' which starts on Dec. 7, and which is intended to push environmental concerns to a new crescendo.

The major difference is that the four-year UNEP plan expresses its aims in the carefully soporific language that UN organizations customarily use to swaddle their objectives. The Swiss document makes its case passionately — and more important, plainly — than any UN official document ever would.

The ambitious paper, entitled 'The UNEP That We Want,' was the product of a select group of 20 top environmental bureaucrats and thinkers, including UNEP's current No. 2 official, Angela Cropper. The document was later delivered to UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner."