Wall Street has found a new way to fight global warming and turn a profit in the process, by monetizing the right to control America’s public and private land.
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), together with an organization called the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG), have proposed setting up a new type of company called a Natural Asset Company (NAC), which would pool investors’ money from around the world to buy the rights to land in the United States with the goal of restricting its use to “sustainable” endeavors.
“Ending the overconsumption of and underinvestment in nature requires bringing natural assets into the financial mainstream,” the NYSE states.
“Healthy ecosystems produce clean air and water, foster biodiversity, regulate the climate, and provide the food on which our existence depends,” the NYSE filing states. “These and other benefits derived from ecosystems are called ecosystem services, and in the aggregate, economists estimate their value at more than US$100 trillion dollars per year.”
Investors may see dollar signs, but critics see a dark side.
“It is an effort to impose another layer of control, and to securitize our national parks, our national forest lands, and some private properties throughout the entire United States,” Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) told The Epoch Times. “This is just a sneaky way to allow very wealthy people to control even more of our natural resources.
“They’re trying to sell this concept of having the right to exclude people from being able to use and access what is our legacy, our lands.”
The federal government owns nearly half of the land in Wyoming, Ms. Hageman’s home state.
‘A Terrifying Prospect’
State officials, particularly in Western states where land is often majority-owned by the federal government, are expressing alarm about this plan.“It is a terrifying prospect, because we look at this as a way for the federal government to lock up land in the state of Alaska against development and block future resource prospects,” Alaska’s Department of Revenue Commissioner Adam Crum told The Epoch Times. “This is a massive decision that’s going to affect the public trust and public lands forever, and we’re not getting proper time of response.
“To have the government pass off potentially a lot of our assets and claim it’s in our best interests is not a fun place to be.
“This is a very big deal, and for it to happen in such a quick way does not bring about confidence; it reeks of nefarious means.”
“It was only 21 days, and for something this drastic, it should be much better notice,” Utah State Treasurer Marlo Oaks told The Epoch Times. “There needs to be serious discussion around this.
“We think of our natural resources as one of the critical assets we have, and North America has some of the richest natural resources in the world.
“These Natural Asset Companies could effectively lock those away in perpetuity.”
“They know that this is a real fleecing of American property rights, and so they’re trying to get it done quietly and quickly without any opposition or public attention,” Margaret Byfield, executive director of American Stewards of Liberty, a property rights nonprofit, told The Epoch Times.
A Prohibition on ‘Unsustainable Activities’
According the NYSE proposal, the NACs would be established pursuant to an agreement in which IEG would create the investment vehicles and license its reporting software to them, and the companies would then be listed and traded on the exchange. Because “most ecosystem services are not monetized today [and] to capture the value of non-monetized ecosystem services,” IEG developed a proprietary reporting system to measure and value the natural assets, based on the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting rather than the standard U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
Some analysts of the plan say that they find it strange that the NYSE is venturing into politics.
David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth Foundation, questioned why “the New York Stock Exchange—the largest stock exchange and the hallmark of free markets across the globe—is suddenly seeking to alter its rules to favor particular domestic policy goals.”
In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, Mr. McIntosh wrote that “an exchange is not the proper vehicle for ideological advocacy ... There is no financial, legal, or practical reason why conservationists should be investing on the NYSE rather than giving a tax-deductible contribution to a nonprofit.”
Critics of the NAC plan are also raising concerns that it could give control over U.S. lands to the ultra-wealthy and foreign interests.
A Deficit of Democracy
U.S. public lands are divided into two main categories: Special Use, which are designated for preservation and include wildlife refuges, parks, and monuments, and Multiple Use, which allows farming, grazing, timber harvesting, mining, drilling, hunting, fishing, hiking, and other uses. While much of the Eastern United States, developed in the early years of the Republic, is privately owned, more than half of the land in Western states is government owned.“That’s why you see lawsuits when the Biden administration won’t lease, or they try to block access or use of, these lands,” Ms. Hageman said. “You’ll sometimes see courts issue orders saying, ‘You’re required by law to lease these lands.’
“That’s why Congress set them up in the first place.”
The NYSE filing states that the rights that NACs would own include farming rights, mineral rights, water rights, or air rights, and that “NACs are expected to license these rights from sovereign nations or private landowners.”
Asked why eco-minded investors would choose NACs over simply donating money to nonprofit conservation trusts, Ms. Hageman said: “The nonprofits buying land for preservation can’t buy federal lands.
“These NACs apply to federal lands, our national parks, our forest service, and our [Bureau of Land Management] lands,” she said. “They also apply to private property that has conservation easements on it.”
Whether Congress can prevent the establishment of NACs is an open question.
“What is so troubling about this is that we’re seeing rules coming out of the administrative agencies that have tremendous impact and they have not gone through a traditional legislative process—it’s just rules by administrative fiat,” Mr. Oaks said.
“This is why comment periods are so important, but it’s important that they also listen to the people and not just bolt forward thinking that they know best.”
Critics of these efforts to acquire and monetize land fear that Americans’ wealth and political rights could be slowly shifting further to the government and to Wall Street.
“We could see the transfer of Americans’ property rights to the global elite and foreign adversaries, and we will lose our ability to control our nation,” Ms. Byfield said.
“Property rights are so essential to self-rule in America.
“Who owns the land and natural resources controls the nation, and in America that was supposed to be ‘We the People.’”
One of the significant uses of federal land is providing food. Public lands are used for farming and grazing of livestock.
In addition to ecological goals, the NACs would also have social justice pursuits. According to the NYSE, NACs must include “an environmental and social policy, a biodiversity policy, a human rights policy, consistent with the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and an equitable benefit sharing policy.”
In response to a request for comment, the SEC stated that the NAC proposal came from the NYSE and specified the SEC’s procedures for approving such proposals, but it otherwise declined to comment. The NYSE provided a copy of its NAC filing but otherwise declined to comment.
