One of the important unanswered questions, the former official said, is “who gets to decide what sustainability is? Or what its outcome means?”
One of the major impediments, the study says, is created by America’s “basic framework of government, established by law,” which is “one of separated and dispersed authority,” in which “government agencies at all levels — federal, state, local, tribal and even international — can only do what they have been authorized to do by their governing authorities — namely, Congress, state legislatures, etc.” –not to mention the U.S. Constitution.
By George Russell Published July 09, 2013 FoxNews.com
EXCLUSIVE: The Obama administration should dramatically reorganize the relationships between America’s federal departments and agencies, and overcome legal barriers to help install the nebulous principle of “sustainability” across government, the economy and society at large, according to a new National Research Council study sponsored by many of the federal departments that would be most affected.
The study also calls for installing sustainability in the “culture of government” and recommends that the U.S. look for inspiration to a number of “national sustainable development strategies” adopted under the United Nation’s controversial Agenda 21, a highly detailed blueprint
for reworking the global economy and environment that was reaffirmed at last year’s Rio + 20 summit on sustainable development.
National sustainable development plans are mandated under Chapter 8 of Agenda 21, titled “Integrating Environment and Development in Decision-Making,” which declared that governments should “where necessary, modify and strengthen procedures so as to facilitate the integrated consideration of social, economic and environmental issues.” Currently, more than 100 nations have adopted such strategies. The U.S. is not among them.
The new document, titled “Sustainability for the Nation, Resource Connections and Government Linkages,” appeared almost two years after it was commissioned by a consortium of federal organizations with environmental portfolios at a cost of about $1 million.
