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World Heritage Sites are designated under a treaty to which
the United States is a party, entitled the “Convention for
the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage,”
which was adopted at the General Conference of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Paris on
November 16, 1972. Although the United States no longer participates
in UNESCO(1),
the U.S. Department of State in conjunction with the National
Park Service and other agencies, administers the program. Sites
continue to be added to the 22 already-designated parks, buildings
and other sites in the United States.
Both “cultural” and “natural” Heritage are
protected under the treaty. Although national sovereignty is an
issue of concern in all designations, the experience of private
property owners indicates that it is the resource designations
which pose the potentially serious detriment to their private
property rights.
Under Article 2 of the Convention, “natural heritage”
is defined:
Natural heritage comprises “natural features consisting of physical and biological formations or groups of such formations which are of outstanding universal value from the aesthetic or scientific point of view;
“geological and physiographical formations and precisely delineated areas which constitute the habitat of threatened species and plants of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation;
“natural sites or precisely delineated natural areas of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science, conservation or natural beauty.”(2)
The “State Parties” (nations) to the Convention pledged,
among other activities, to take appropriate “legal”
measures necessary to protect this heritage. In practice in the
U.S., this has meant that the National Park Service has stated
that natural areas can only be designated if they are owned by
the government. Even the Adirondack region of northern New York,
which is included in a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and which is
half owned by the State of New York and the other half rigidly
controlled by a state zoning agency, does not qualify for World
Heritage status in the eyes of U.S. government officials.
But private property rights can be greatly affected by the designation
of a World Heritage Site nearby. The most notorious feature of
the Convention affecting private property rights is where the
World Heritage Committee is to maintain a “List of World
Heritage in Danger.”(3) Although the Convention calls for
scientific research and studies to draw up the list,
and although the list is for the purpose of assisting the nation
where the endangered site is located with the costs where
“major operations are necessary” because of “accelerated
deterioration,” destruction by “earthquakes,” the
“threat of armed conflict,” and the like, the extreme
environmentalists who control land policy in the Clinton Administration
successfully used the clause to execute an international scheme
to declare Yellowstone Park, a “World Heritage Site in Danger”
and bring plans for a mine outside the park to a stop.(4)
The Yellowstone debacle was carried out in spite of its clear
conflict with carefully worded language in the Convention, most
notably in Article 6:
“fully respecting the sovereignty of the States on whose territory the cultural and natural heritage mentioned in Articles 1 and 2 is situated, and without prejudice to property rights provided by national legislation...”(5)
Because of the Yellowstone affair, which is thoroughly documented
with all of the paper exchanges so beloved by bureaucrats, reasonable
people can no longer dismiss as speculative the grave concerns
about the threats to constitutional rights posed by the World
Heritage Sites.
The World Heritage Sites and their recognized and incipient “buffer
zones” provide a large arena which needs active defense of
private property rights, local home rule and natural sovereignty
by dedicated citizens living in the affected region or state.
A list published with this article gives each site by state.
In addition, the National Park Service has inadvertently revealed
a roster of 70 tentative future World Heritage Sites, which
is also published with this article. The official description
of each site is available from the Property Rights Foundation.
The relevant documents and status of the “progress”
of designation of sites involving natural resource areas demand
scrutiny and monitoring by citizens, local publicity in the potentially
affected areas, and public hearings by local and state government.
(1)
In 1984, the U.S. withdrew from UNESCO because of its stance against
freedom of speech, its financial mismanagement, and other important
matters.
(2) Article 2, “Convention for the Protection
of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage,” UNESCO, 1972
(3) Article 11, Convention, ibid.
(4) A reliable and rather complete account
of the Yellowstone affair is in chapter 7, “The Yellowstone
Controversy: A Question of Sovereignty” Global Greens,
by James M. Sheehan (Capital Research Center, Washington, D.C.,
1998)
Competitive Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C., published
an account called “The Yellowstone Affair” in May 1997,
by Professor Jeremy Rabkin.
(5) Article 6, Convention, ibid. It should
be noted that the UNESCO document is mistaken and the U.S. was
wrong to ratify the language where “property rights”
are “provided by national legislation,” as these
rights are inherent to each person and guaranteed
by the U.S. Constitution. But the idea is there and the Yellowstone
affair violated this as well as other features of the Convention
even if the whole scenario was manipulated by U.S.-based environmentalists.
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