The Agenda 21 conspiracy theory is back in the media, thanks to a New York Times report on Tea Party opposition to bike lanes, smart meters, public parks and other dastardly measures that the United Nations is preparing “to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.”

For UN nerds and sustainable development saddos, Agenda 21 is a stunningly tedious ground-breaking attempt to bring together environment and development in a ‘dynamic programme’ to be implemented by a ‘global partnership’ of international organisations, governments, businesses, and local communities in ‘every area in which human impacts on the environment’.

Agenda 21 was agreed at the Earth Summit in 1992 and was briefly a big deal in the 1990s. Even my local Council here in rural England briefly had an Agenda 21 group. Now though, despite being regularly reaffirmed at UN summits, it’s largely forgotten. Neither has it had much, if any, impact on global development, sustainable or otherwise.

But the American right has never seen it that way. I don’t know who first read Agenda 21 and got the fear, but back in 2005, Nancy Levant (author of the anti-feminism tract, The Cultural Devastation of American Women) was already freaking out:

No one told me about Agenda 21. I found it by accident on the Internet. Then I went to the U.N.’s website and read Agenda 21…I started documenting and keeping running lists because, I discovered, Agenda 21 was huge, highly developed, and a done deal…

I also realized that there was no way to explain Agenda 21 easily. It’s too big, profoundly sophisticated, intentionally masked and hidden by corporate agendas and ecological ideologies that are, themselves, exploited by corporate agendas.

But more than that, I realized that for Americans to understand Agenda 21, they would have to come to terms with a truth that, I fear, they won’t believe. What would that truth be? Let me try to say it in one sentence: Agenda 21 is the end of America.

The paranoia, however, goes further back than that – to 2001 or possibly long before (the NYT says that Tom DeWeese has been working on the issue since 1992). At its most extreme, adherents believe that Agenda 21 is a front for a broader “global depopulation eugenics program” which will see six billion people culled from the global population.

The big boys have got in on the act, as well. Glenn Beck portrays Agenda 21 as the perfect example of how globalist elites hide their cunning plans for world domination in plain sight (he’s particularly suspicious of the local government organisation for sustainability – poor old ICLEI). Alex Jones, pushes the idea of a eugenics cult particularly hard. Even David Icke is in on the act.

The UN has always tried to ignore this stuff, imagining it will stay safely out on the fringe. But it hasn’t. Here’s Newt Gingrich opposing Agenda 21 as “a series of centralized planning provisions” that will take control of American private property.  He sees it as an example of how the UN is seeking to establish “extra-constitutional control” over the United States.

Last month, the Republican National Committee adopted a resolution recognising the “destructive and insidious” nature of Agenda 21 and the push is now on to get this condemnation onto the party’s platform for the 2012 Convention.

Opposition to Agenda 21 – and to the UN itself – is  now firmly in the Republican mainstream, in other words. The UN could do with thinking carefully about this as it prepared for the Earth Summit’s successor, Rio +20. It wouldn’t want to give the next generation of conspiracy-minded whackjobs more meat to feed on, would it?

• Scorecard co-editor and Brookings Senior Fellow Justin Vaïsse!
• Former head of UN peacekeeping and foreign affairs guru Jean-Marie Guéhenno!!
• James Traub, superstar essayist for the New York Times and Foreign Policy!!!
• Me.

This is an open event.  Fuller details and an address for RSVPs are available here.

 

ECFR has just launched the second edition of its European Foreign Policy Scorecard, which gives the EU grades for how it dealt with different international challenges over the last year (full disclosure: I am a minor contributor to the project).  Here are the headline scores and analyses:

• China (overall grade ‘C’) – Europe hoped to strengthen its approach to China in 2011, but Europe’s crisis turned into China’s opportunity, with European nations fighting each for Chinese markets, investments and cash.
• Middle East and North Africa (C+) – The Arab Awakening took everybody by surprise, but EU member states have so far failed to deliver on the promised ‘money, markets and mobility’. Libya highlighted some European divisions, and EU leaders have not yet developed a long term approach to the region.
• Russia (C+) – The EU achieved an impressive degree of unity when dealing with Moscow, and there were concrete results in areas like trade. The impending return of Vladimir Putin, however, is ending a period of wishful thinking over its engagement with Russia.
• United States (B-) – The US ‘leadership from behind’ in Libya showed that some European countries could play a dynamic international role and cooperate with the US. But it also revealed serious shortcomings in European capabilities, as the US starts pursuing its Asia First strategy at the expense of interest in Europe.
• Wider Europe (C+) – The EU achieved progress on issues such as enlargement in the Western Balkans, but relations with key regional player Turkey were (again) deeply troubled. There were only limited results in relations with Eastern Partnership countries.
• Multilateral issues and crisis management (B) – Securing a legally binding deal on reducing carbon emissions at Durban was one of several qualified European successes. But the efforts to stabilise the euro zone overshadowed these, for instance in the troubled G20 summit in Cannes.

There’s a great interactive website for the report here.  Enjoy!

Tuesday should be a dramatic day in the UN Security Council.  Hillary Clinton, William Hague and Alan Juppé are all jetting in for a debate on Syria and the Europeans are set to table a resolution calling for a political transition in Damascus that Russia is determined to veto.  China will probably do so too.  Smash, bang, wallop.

What are the Europeans up to here?  Last week, I published a commentary for the EU Institute for Security Studies summarizing the European strategy towards Syria:

European policymakers have recognised that they are not best-placed to mediate a final political settlement to the crisis. Instead, they have ceded political responsibility to the Arab League, which has gradually hardened its stance against Assad and has even called for him to stand aside (although the League has not been firm enough for some of members, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia). Meanwhile the EU’s policies have included (i) backing UN and League attempts to monitor the situation in Syria in an effort to restrain the Assad government; (ii) putting pressure on Damascus through sanctions; and (iii) using debates at the Security Council and the wider UN system to reinforce the case for pressure. 

Even though the Security Council debates have rendered almost nothing concrete (except for a mildly worded presidential statement cooked up by the IBSA countries last August) the Europeans have arguably utilized the UN route quite cleverly:

Although frustrated by Sino-Russian obstructionism, European diplomats have chosen to use the Security Council as a platform to publicise the case against Assad. In October, having tried to find compromise language on sanctions, they tabled a mildly-worded resolution in the knowledge that China and Russia would veto it. This ostensibly self-defeating strategy (which the U.S. had doubts about) has at least pushed Moscow and Beijing to try and legitimise their defense of Damascus. Russia has served up a series of resolutions of its own, calling for an end to violence but making no reference to sanctions. 

In the meantime, resolutions condemning Syria’s actions have been passed by large majorities in both the Human Right Council and UN General Assembly – forums that are usually hostile to Western positions. In the final quarter of 2011, the Arab League used the threat of pushing for Security Council action (as it did very effectively over Libya) to persuade Assad to accept its observer mission. 

So even if Russia and China use their veto again this week, the Europeans will keep coming back to the Council for public relations reasons.  I think this is a cunning strategy, although it will fuel talk about the decline of the Council as a serious decision-making body.  It’s remarkable to think that it’s only ten months since the Council was being praised for OK-ing the Libyan campaign.

In recent years, the word ‘globalisation’ has become synonymous with a whole range of international ills.  Financial globalisation has been particularly maligned.  Once hailed as the solution to poverty and underdevelopment, it is now blamed for the unfettered flow of ‘hot’ capital around the world, the build-up of credit and asset bubbles and the creation of unsustainable global imbalances that have led to dangerous levels of volatility in the global economy.  But are either of these views fair?  Do we expect too much from globalisation, or do we credit it too little?

Let’s start with the positives.  Over the last century, globalisation – the faster and cheaper flow of goods, services, capital, people and ideas around the world – has helped to lift millions out of poverty.  It has enabled developing countries abundant in resources and manpower to generate remarkable rates of growth, while in the developed world it has brought down the cost of consumer goods, stimulated innovation in many sectors and created new markets for goods and services.  Globalisation has provided unprecedented opportunities for people to live and work abroad, and helped to spread acceptance of universal values such as democracy, freedom and human rights.

Yet in spite of these achievements, globalisation has manifestly failed to deliver security and prosperity for all.  Inequality may have fallen between countries over the last thirty years, but it has risen within them as an ever smaller elite have captured most of the gains associated with technological progress.  Global competition has spurred huge productivity increases in many industries, but has also put serious pressure on jobs and wages.  These problems were evident before the global financial crisis, but have been magnified and exacerbated by it.  In 2003, a Eurobarometer survey found that 60 per cent of Brits were in favour of globalisation, compared to 27 per cent who were opposed.  By 2010, just 30 per cent of UK respondents to a YouGov poll thought that globalisation was good for the British economy, against 34 per cent who thought it was bad (with the rest being indifferent or unsure).

Many see globalisation as an unstoppable force that cannot be managed or reversed, and worry about the dislocation and insecurity that comes with rapid integration of nation states into the global economy.  These fears are both understandable and legitimate.  However, if we look at the actual levels of interconnectedness between people and countries, it is clear that we have not yet reached Thomas Friedman’s ‘flat’ world in which the integration of markets, nation-states, and technologies is deep and inexorable. For example, just one per cent of letters sent by mail cross national borders, while less than two per cent of phone minutes involve international calls.  Just two per cent of all university students are individuals studying abroad. Even trade integration is less intense than might be assumed, with the proportion of goods and services exported across national borders having reached a high point of 29 per cent of global GDP in 2008 before falling to 23 per cent the following year.

While global economic forces are playing an increasingly direct role in the lives of individuals, this does not take away the fundamental agency of nations, governments and their people.  Globalisation is best viewed as a dynamic process rather than an end in and of itself, and one which can be shaped to deliver progressive aims of sustainable growth, rising prosperity and receding inequality for all.  But these outcomes are by no means guaranteed.  They require bold and sustained action by policymakers round the world, at a time when the temptation to retreat into protectionist policies is increasingly powerful.  They also mean focusing not just on how to boost exports and growth, but on how to protect those who are most vulnerable to the shocks caused by global economic change.

To think through the decisions and the tradeoffs involved in these challenges, IPPR has been conducting a major project on the future of globalisation, led by Peter Mandelson.  Today, we publish our final report, The Third Wave of Globalisation.  Over the past year, my colleague Will Straw and I have travelled with Lord Mandelson to Brazil, China, India and Germany, learning about how these countries are responding to globalisation from policymakers, business leaders and academics.  In the UK, we visited industrialists and business owners in Newcastle to talk about changing ways of doing business, and students in Hartlepool to hear how global economic change is affecting their lives aspirations.  The message from these conversations was clear:  globalisation has the potential to improve living standards around the world, but only if it is made to work much better than it has in recent years.

Our report sets out a number of recommendations for how this might be done, including international actions to prevent the renewed build-up of current account imbalances, the volatility of short-term capital flows and a race to the bottom on wages and corporation taxes, and domestic reforms to create more strategic industrial strategies, smarter skills policies, and welfare systems that protect people when they are most in need of assistance, such as when they lose their job.  Together, we hope that these serve to reaffirm the value of a well-managed global system in which greater integration is welcomed rather than feared.

Good news: Ban Ki-moon will save Antarctica!

Ban Ki-moon has just set out his plans for his second five year term. He is not unambitious:

“Today I want to share with you an action agenda for the coming five years,” he told the Assembly as he returned to the rostrum to brief Member States on his vision for his second term.

“A plan to make the most of the opportunities before us. A plan to help create a safer, more secure, more sustainable, more equitable future. A plan to build the future we want,” he said.

The “action agenda” presented today describes specific measures regarding each of the five imperatives, including an unprecedented campaign to wipe out five of the world’s major killers – malaria, polio, paediatric HIV infections, maternal and neonatal tetanus, and measles.

Mr. Ban also announced that the UN will work with Member States to make Antarctica a World Nature Preserve and that he will appoint a new special representative for youth.

Hm… a year ago, I published an article in which I noted that “Ban has oscillated between bouts of fatalism about the UN’s decline and curious bursts of overheated rhetoric about its importance.”  We seem to be in one the latter periods:

“Waves of change are surging around us,” he told the Assembly. “If we navigate wisely, we can create a more secure and sustainable future for all. The United Nations is the ship to navigate these waters…

“We are the venue for partnerships and action. Now is our moment. Now is the time to create the future we want,” he stated.

Interestingly, Ban didn’t use the words “South Sudan” once in his main speech (he nodded to it in a post-speech press conference) despite the evidence that the country may be falling apart on the UN’s watch.  But then he didn’t mention Syria either.  Still, he didn’t overlook the UN’s crisis management operations completely:

Our operations build bridges — literally and among communities.

Clever, huh?

Click here to view the embedded video.

The idea of ‘SDGs’, after all, has acquired a lot of political momentum in recent months. Partly that’s because they’re seen as a potential outcome from this summer’s Rio+20 sustainable development conference – at a point when very few concrete outcomes from Rio appear to be in prospect (see the ‘zero draft outcome document’ pdf that was published earlier this month). The SDGs agenda is also topical given that the Millennium Development Goals are due to hit their 2015 deadline pretty soon, raising the question of what should come after them. (See Claire’s excellent recent publications, like this and this, on that for a full briefing on where things stand on that front.)

But the funny thing is that there’s remarkably little clarity on what SDGs would cover, or how they’d work. Would they just run from now to 2015, alongside the existing MDGs, and cover a few ‘gaps’ that were missed out in the MDGs – like access to energy? Or would they in fact take over from the MDGs after 2015, thus becoming the new organising framework for global development policy? These are big questions – and at a time, of course, when multilateralism has really been struggling to make much running not just on Rio preparations, but also on climate, trade, and any number of other key issue areas.

Against this backdrop, David and I have just published a short CIC briefing paper (pdf) that discusses where we are on the SDGs agenda – and how it might usefully pan out from here. In a nutshell, our argument is that policymakers should think twice before regarding SDGs as an “easy win” from Rio. We argue that this is a very complex and potentially very contentious area of policy – and that policymakers should play a long game at this stage rather than going for quick wins that could all too easily backfire. Accordingly, we think that discussion of SDGs at Rio should go no further than discussion of broad principles and raising the level of ambition. A lot more shared awareness – not just between policymakers, but also with publics, private sector, media, civil society and so on – is needed before the discussion about specifics gets underway in earnest.