Corporate giant Monsanto, known for its controversial business model, lobbying, and its widely criticized genetically modified organisms (GMOs), has officially joined the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a group of powerful interests including major banks and Big Oil backing the United Nations “Agenda 21” scheme for so-called “sustainable development.” Critics, however, expressed alarm over the announcement, saying the global “sustainability” push is really a transparent plot to centralize power in the UN and enrich special interests at the expense of private property rights, national sovereignty, and individual liberty.

Despite the widespread suspicion and criticism plaguing both Monsanto and the global Big Business alliance pushing the UN’s Agenda 21, the company and the coalition celebrated the move in a recent press release. According to the announcement late last month, the biotech behemoth will be rolling out a “sustainability” course for its employees all over the world. Chairman and CEO Hugh Grant will represent the GMO company as a “Council Member” in the global “sustainable development” coalition.

Even though Monsanto has become probably one of the most controversial companies in the world, it is extraordinarily well connected in the halls of power, and the global business alliance for “sustainable development” celebrated the firm’s decision to sign up. “In joining the WBCSD, Monsanto is taking an important step along a continuum towards developing a more sustainable agriculture system — one that improves our daily lives, respects our global environment and recognizes the importance of the world’s small-holder farmers,” claimed council President Peter Bakker in a statement posted on the group’s website.

Farming and global agriculture must change, the WBCSD continued. “We must find new ways to protect soils, enhance ecosystems and optimize land use in ways that are environmentally sound,” Bakker added in the press release. “And we must move towards a future vision for agriculture where absolutes become as out of place as a one-size-fits-all approach to farming.”

Indeed, the WBCSD’s website is rather candid about its aims and its “One World vision,” explicitly touting the UN Agenda 21 and its radical plan for transforming human civilization. “The One World vision is the ultimate stage of a conceptual evolution that started decades ago,” the council notes on its site. “This evolution produced several paradigm shifts that combine how we comprehend our world, and, as a result, how we try to deal with it.”

[link to thenewamerican.com]