KEY DATA: The UN has targeted 14 areas in America for designation as World Heritage Conservation sites.
Not to sound like a loon, but the United Nations really is taking over America’s lands.
It’s happening by treaty, not trigger, as a largely dormant tool of international land conservation is being awakened as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) now lists 14 potential World Heritage Sites to designate in America.
The last to be named were in 1995, and then, only two – the Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico and the Waterton Glacier International Peace Park in Montana and Canada, according to UNESCO’s list.
Now up for consideration are the likes of the Thomas Jefferson Buildings, including the Virginia State Capitol, 16 structures in Mount Vernon, Va., and three churches renowned as Civil Rights Movement Sites in Alabama.
So what’s the big deal?
World Heritage Sites – like their American counterparts, the congressionally designated National Heritage Areas – are properties with such perceived historical, cultural or natural resource significance that preservation is considered a necessity for the good of future generations.
UNESCO defines the role of World Heritage Sites as protecting areas that have “outstanding value to humanity.” The Statue of Liberty is a World Heritage Site; so, too, are Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks.
Put aside for the moment that consideration of “outstanding value” opens the door to a variety of interpretations and is a nebulous standard, at best. Once the determination is made that the site does meet the criteria for inclusion on the World Heritage Site list, international law takes over and future land-use decisions must abide the tenets of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention.
Some highlights of this treaty: Article 11 calls for participating treaty nations — of which America is one, and has been since 1973 — to inventory properties of all proposed heritage areas to submit to the World Heritage Committee for consideration.
This Committee, comprised of representatives of 21 nations who are elected during regular sessions of UNESCO, analyzes these inventories and lists which face threats from “large-scale public or private projects or rapid urban or tourist development projects … [or] changes in the use or ownership of the land,” Article 11 continues.
Articles 15 and 16 ask that treaty participants pay into a World Heritage Fund to use “as the Committee shall define.” The payments are voluntary – but nations that don’t pay are not eligible to hold membership on the Committee. And since it’s the Committee that decides “which requests to it for international assistance shall be considered,” and whether these requests should be fulfilled via grants and “non-repayable subsidies,” according to Articles 21 and 22, a lock-out for membership could leave America vulnerable to wealth transfer schemes by poorer nations.
Really, just sift through the eight pages of this treaty and what emerges is a clear picture of international control. America sends an inventory of certain property to a body of the United Nations, the World Heritage Committee.
This authoritative body determines whether the land uses on these properties pose a threat to future preservation efforts and if so, dangles the prospect of World Heritage Funds to assist with the realization of conservation goals.
Kindly enough, the treaty allows that some of these funds could even be put toward the hiring of “experts, technicians and skilled labor to ensure that the approved [conservation] work is correctly carried out,” Article 22 stipulates.
Does America really need an international eye on her lands? It’s not a program of simple encouragement to conserve, as UNESCO attempts to convince. Rather, it’s a program to “encourage states parties to establish management plans and set up reporting systems on the state of conservation of their World Heritage sites,” according to the World Heritage Web site.
A vast difference exists between a recommendation to conserve, and a binding international treaty that pushes management plans and sets up reporting systems and compels monetary contributions. The first is friendly suggestion.
The second, no matter how it’s labeled or packaged or presented, is government planning and control. And if it’s local land use policy that’s being influenced or decided at the international level, then America should just say no.
TAKE HOME: Despite statements to the contrary, World Heritage designation imposes strict land controls that erode America’s private property rights.
Cheryl K. Chumley, a 2008-09 Phillips Foundation journalism fellow, is researching National Heritage Areas and private property rights.
