A quorum may not even have been present. For The 21st Century is working on a companion treaty to control use of the earth's water. The goal is creation of a United Nations bureaucracy to restrict and control through international law the use of all natural resources in compliance with United Nations Agenda 21 and principles of Sustainable Development. Under the Treaties, United Nations enforcers could stop and reverse any activity which they believe may move land closer to a desert condition. Examples of prohibited activity include converting forest land to pasture, or pasture to cropland, or cropland to industrial, commercial or housing uses.
Control applies to all land, whether publicly or privately owned.
The Desertification Treaty contains requirements for approving school environmental curricula, and for massive and ongoing transfer of funds and technology from rich nations such as the United States to poor nations everywhere. Land owners are excluded from the process of making and implementing land use policy. In an outrageous display of legislative malpractice, Treaty ratification was done without parliamentary procedure, review, comment, debate, and recorded vote, which makes a mockery of the Constitutional process and puts American citizens increasingly under control of a United Nations bureaucracy whose Socialist member nations have a long track record of opposing United States interests.