Part 1 of this series provided a brief overview of the history of Agenda 2030, its preamble and Goal 1. This article will discuss the Agenda’s Goal 2 to end hunger and malnutrition. As you read, consider questions such as,
· if these are global goals, who will oversee them, and
· where will your family go when things go awry?
As United States citizens, we must become informed of agendas of outside agencies like the United Nations because they can have such an impact on both the economic and social policies made today, often by Executive Order.
Details of the UN’s Agenda 2030 are found in the document, “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. All quotes in this article are from this Agenda 2030 report.
Goal 2 of Agenda 2030 is to end hunger and malnutrition, and to ensure food security worldwide.
According to the Agenda, this is to be accomplished by:
o “Developing rural areas,
o Developing sustainable agriculture and fisheries,
o Supporting smallholder farmers (esp. women farmers), herders and fishers in developing countries and
o Improving market access for these countries”.
· It also proposes “maintaining diversified seed and plant banks” and funding investment in agricultural research, technology development, and “gene banks” for plants and livestock. It also proposes eliminating agricultural export subsidies.
Ending poverty is a laudable goal. But what exactly does “ensuring equal rights to economic resources” mean? And how much support of less developed areas is required to meet this goal?
For instance, the phrase “improve market access” for less developed nations could open up a whole arena of economic policies that would drive prices up for the nations that choose to protect and promote markets for developing countries at the expense of their own exports.
Who would fund this investment? Would there be taxes and tariffs applied to the citizens in more developed nations to achieve this goal?
The UN’s World Program Chief, David Beasley, gave one possible solution. He stated publicly that just a small fraction (2%) of Elon Musk’s wealth could do the job.
MUSK OFFERS FUNDING
In response, Musk offered to pay the $6.6 Billion tab proposed by the UN for ending world hunger.
But it seems that Musk, like many others, is cautious about where these funds would go if placed in the hands of the UN. He asked first for a full accounting of exactly how this amount of money would be spent to end world hunger before he would hand over his cash.
In response to Musk’s offer, the UN World Program created an overview of how $6.6 billion in funds to end world hunger would be spent. This is the closest to an actionable plan, but it is still vague on details.
Broken down, the UN’s plan looks like this:
· $3.5 billion U.S. for food and its delivery, including the cost of shipping, transport, warehousing and “last mile” delivery. This last bit would require security escorts in areas where a “conflict” (e.g., war) is going on, since, well, armies have been known to seize food intended for the poor, in the past.
· These security escorts would distribute the food to “those who need it most” (ibid), but how will that be determined? Who will decide that the food goes to an actual family in need, and not into the warehouse of a less-than-honest administrator? (See M.M. Pierce’s book At the Core: The United Nations Tragically Massive Corruption and How It Affects You, that describes what corruption at the local level administratively looks like).
· Spending $2 billion for cash and food vouchers (and transaction fees) in places where there are markets, which would also help support the local economy
· “$700 million for country-specific costs to design, scale up, and manage the implementation” of “millions of tons more food and cash transfer and vouchers” within offices and satellite offices in 43 countries. Again, cash transfers in countries with a historical past of taking some of the money for themselves could be problematic, to say the least.
· $400 million to management, administration, and accountability (by whom?) and coordinating the logistics of getting the food where it is intended, as well as “global monitoring and analysis of hunger worldwide”, as well as “risk management and independent auditors dedicated to oversight”. Who chooses these auditors?
The top 10 recipient countries indicated under this plan include DR Congo, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Venezuela, Haiti, Syria, Pakistan, along with “33 other countries” (ibid).
While this plan is better than the one in Agenda 2030 (basically, no plan?), it is still extremely vague, and it is still under debate whether or not Musk actually gave his donation. The World Food Programme ("WFP") plan provides a brief overview and identifies countries that would receive funds, but actual, actionable steps are still left undefined, including:
· Which firms would provide the audit and oversight needed?
· Who would provide the food -- especially in light of international food shortages predicted over the next year?
· Who selects the food providers? And the trucking and air firms used for transport?
· With a history of armies seizing food intended for the poor, local administrators using funds for their own use and stealing food, why would this program avoid these problems?
But there is another concern this goal raises. The call in this document is for member nations that are wealthy to agree to help other less developed member nations. But this could be an ominous prelude to worldwide socialism?
What else could universal “social protection systems” and “equal rights to economic resources” as used within Agenda 2030 actually mean?
Other questions related to Goal 2, as written, come to mind. How is “improved market access” for developing nations to be accomplished? And at what cost to our nation? Do we lower tariffs for less developed nations and allow them to be placed on our goods to “level the playing field”? This will certainly lower the wealth of the US and other developed nations that embrace doing this, but will this prove to truly assist other nations? And what happens if other nations, such as Russia and China, do not agree to do the same and instead decide to protect their own market access? Do we as a nation lose economically while others gain as a result?
Also, who is going to maintain the proposed seed and plant banks described in Goal 2? And what kinds of seeds and plants will be grown? There is already a deep concern that genetically modified plants produced by investors such as the Bill Gates Foundation are changing our food supply -- and not for the better health of those who eat them.
How would the UN achieve this goal, as its promoter, without taking an increasing amount of sovereignty from its member states?
Are we, as member nations, to give up our status as independent nations, to achieve this goal?
Is the price of ending world hunger choosing to become part of a global “economic support” network as this agenda seems to imply?
And why has this goal not been updated to address one of the largest factors affecting ongoing poverty and hungry in nations such as Africa – the draconian measures to shut down businesses due to COVID-19?
“Furthermore, the pandemic has a considerable negative effect on the economic development in Africa. Indeed, lately several households in Africa, with low levels of educational attainment and high dependence on labor income, experience an enormous real income shock that has visibly jeopardized their food security…By far, the ‘informal food sector’ in Africa is still the highest employer to the young African population and has been greatly disorganised by COVID-19 pandemic” (Prudence Atukunda, Wenche Barth Eide, Kristin R. Kardel, Per Ole Iversen and Ane C. Westerberg. Unlocking the potential for achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 – ‘Zero Hunger’ – in Africa: targets, strategies, synergies and challenges. Food and Nutrition Research).
Also, while providing food shipments and funds is helpful (if they arrive where intended), what about addressing other factors that substantially contribute to hunger, such as “war/conflicts, poor governance, inadequate health services, increasing inequality, weak economic development” (ibid) among others? Until these issues are addressed, sending food will be only a temporary help to nations that receive food and logistical or administrative support.
The problem with the approach described in Goal 2 is that during the past century, totalitarian economic governance has historically failed every time, even when implemented for what appeared initially to be a good or worthy reason. Look at what happened in Russia, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy, and, more recently, Venezuela. If governments that came into centralized power nationally because they promised economic prosperity to citizens failed on a local basis, how can we imagine that this model will succeed simply because the power is centralized globally?
And who will then be in charge of our economics and food supplies: the nation, or the UN, in the pursuit of achieving this goal?
The past history of corruption within the UN does not bode well for a good outcome if we give this organization any form of food policy oversight or the funds to do so. This is an organization that has experienced numerous past economic scandals, from the “Oil for Food” scandal in Iran to a former UN procurement official (Alexander Yakovlev) pleading guilty to conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering charges; to the head of the UN budget oversight committee, Vladimir Kuznetsov, being indicted on money laundering charges (Jenkins, M. (2005), “The Corruption of the United Nations.” Philadelphia Trumpet, 12/2005).
Should we really trust this organization to oversee economic equity and ending poverty for the world?
For instance, in 2015, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara stated: “John Ashe, the 68th president of the U.N. General Assembly, sold himself and the global institution he led...We will be asking: Is bribery business-as-usual at the U.N.?” he said, “In view of the pervasive pattern of past corruption at the UN, including most notably the oil-for-food scandal, procurement scandals and multiple allegations of sexual exploitation of civilians by UN peacekeepers assigned to protect them, the UN has been knee deep in wrongdoing for years” (Klein, J. (10/14/2015). “Corruption Rears its Head Again at the United Nations”. Front Page Magazine)
The creation of a UN Committee on Corruption in recent years does not mean that this organization does not suffer from corruption any longer, especially in light of the lack of oversight and accountability that has enabled corruption at the local level in various instances, such as documented by M.M. Pierce in his book, At the Core: The United Nations Tragically Massive Corruption and How It Affects You. This history of corruption should make any member state hesitate to hand over any form of economic sovereignty to the UN.
Maybe this is why Musk didn’t hand over his 6.6 billion.
Continue reading Part 3 HERE.
