Experts rubbish claim that 'US, Australia will cede land to UN under environment deal'

"The EPA and the Australian Department of Climate Change have signed a NEW, JOINT Memorandum of Understanding which will eventually lead to confiscation of at least 30% of US and Australian land and hand it over to the United Nations," says a Facebook post from October 31, referring to America's Environmental Protection Agency.

Its author is an influencer named Maria Zee who has previously spread misinformation debunked by AFP. Attached to the post is a video featuring Zee on "The Stew Peters Show", an alt-right online discussion programme.

Image

A screenshot of the false post, captured on December 21, 2023

Zee claims the US-Australia agreement is tied to UN goals for biodiversity protection, which were adopted by more than 190 countries in December 2022 (archived links here and here).

"UN plots to seize US and Aussie land," reads a headline banner across the video.

But there is no link between the memorandum of understanding and the UN, while her claim about ceding land has no basis, international law and climate experts say.

'Peculiar narrative'

The agreement between the EPA and Australia's Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water sets out how the two governments will cooperate on climate goals, including by establishing a national environmental protection agency for Australia.

Plans for the new Australian body are part of an overhaul of the country's environmental protection legislation (archived link).

"This MOU (memorandum of understanding) is really just creating a foundation for the two agencies to cooperate in a variety of ways as Australia canvasses how it wants its own national agency to look," said Natalie Klein, an international law specialist and professor at the University of New South Wales (archived link).

"That’s the extent of it," Klein told AFP in an email on December 14.

She said Zee's claim was "a very peculiar narrative to be circulating about this MOU".

"There is absolutely nothing in this agreement that would enable the UN to confiscate any lands from either the US or Australia," Klein said.

These sorts of agreements are a statement of "political commitment" and do not impose any legal obligations, according to a guidance note from Australia's foreign ministry (archived link).

Klein said the MOU makes clear it is not "legally binding".

"Section 10 is explicit on this point, and is reaffirmed in Section 6 in denying any financial liability arising for either country," she told AFP.

Donald Rothwell, a professor of international law at the Australian National University, shared the same view of the document (archived link).

"It goes to some length to make clear that it creates no legal obligations for either Australia or the US," Rothwell told AFP in a December 14 email.

Conservation, not confiscation

Talk show host Peters has regularly promoted bogus theories and false claims on his programme, particularly concerning Covid-19 and vaccines.

During her appearance, Zee falsely charged that the UN's biodiversity protection plan is not about "protecting the environment", but "actually about stripping countries of 30 percent of ownership of their land and handing it over to the UN under the name of conservation" (archived link).

However, the agreement between Canberra and Washington makes no mention of the UN or its Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), as the plan is known.

Describing it as "fairly standard", Rothwell said the MOU does not reference "any international treaty obligations that Australia or the US have".

"The instrument makes no reference to the United Nations, or any United Nations agency," he added.

Signed at the COP15 climate summit in Montreal in 2022, the GBF pledges to turn 30 percent of the planet into protected zones by 2030 and to stump up $30 billion in yearly conservation aid for developing nations.

The GBF is also not legally binding, according to the UN's Environment Programme Finance Initiative (archived link).

Nick Abel, a climate researcher at the Australian National University, said he had combed the GBF for anything that "could mislead anyone into thinking the UN intends to 'confiscate' land from the US or Australia, or France, China, Russia, or any other nation" (archived link).

"I found nothing," he told AFP on December 5.

"I found instead that the whole emphasis of the GBF is about enabling humans to increase the benefits we get from biodiversity by managing it wisely, sustainably and equitably."

AFP has previously debunked other false claims of Australian land seizures in reports here and here.