Property Rights Activist Explains Trap Posed by Plan to Trade America’s Natural Resources

The New York Stock Exchange, on Feb. 21, 2024. Peter Morgan/AP Photo

A Wall Street proposal to create a new type of publicly traded company that would buy controlling rights to America’s public and private land could have allowed “world elites” to profit from the country’s natural resources, had it not been withdrawn three months later, according to Margaret Byfield, executive director of American Stewards of Liberty.

At the end of September 2023, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) filed a proposal to create and list Natural Asset Companies (NACs). These companies 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.

What is a Natural Asset Company?

According to the NYSE’s filing with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), an NAC is a new type of enterprise with the rights to “ecosystem services” produced by natural or working lands, such as national reserves or large-scale farmlands.

Ecosystem services are the natural processes created by nature, such as “pollination, photosynthesis, clean air, clean water, and water filtration,” said Ms. Byfield. “It’s not man’s hand working the land to create a product. This is what nature does with or without us.”

The NYSE and the Intrinsic Exchange Group (IEG) tried to quantify and monetize these natural processes, Ms. Byfield said. “That’s what would be enrolled in these natural asset companies. Then the investors [who invest in NACs] would control these processes, which would then control the actual land.“

According to the NYSE filing, economists estimate the value of so-called ecosystem services at ”more than $100 trillion per year.”

The NYSE and the IEG, a financial innovation company started and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and other investors, launched the development of the NACs concept in September 2021.

The IEG is supported and funded by “the same entities that are pushing the climate crisis narrative, the ‘30x30’ conservation agenda, and ‘net-zero’ decarbonization,” Ms. Byfield said in an interview on Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.

“All of these agendas will lock up the land and lock up our productivity,” she said.

One of the goals of the 30x30 agenda, introduced in January 2021 by President Joe Biden via executive order, is to set aside 30 percent of the United States’ land and freshwater areas and 30 percent of U.S. ocean areas for conservation by 2030.

NAC Stopped

According to American Stewards of Liberty, the plan “was designed to gain functional control of America’s natural resources.”

When the organization discovered the partnership between IEG and the NYSE to create NACs as a new investment vehicle, it started monitoring government policies related to natural resources and contacting journalists and elected officials at different levels to voice their concerns.

The first elected official briefed by American Stewards of Liberty about the 30x30 policy was Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) when he was the governor of Nebraska, Ms. Byfield said.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts speaks at a press conference on the border situation while other governors look on, in Mission, Texas, on Oct. 6, 2021. Marina Fatina/NTD

In 2021, Mr. Ricketts, as a governor, led 14 other governors to write a letter to President Biden expressing their concerns about the 30x30 plan.

“He really took the position that he was going to stand between the federal government and his constituents,” which led to the 30x30 plan becoming known “as a federal land grab,” Ms. Byfield said.

After the SEC published the NYSE proposal to enlist NACs, the organization started briefing members of Congress on the issue.

At the request of American Stewards of Liberty, Sens. Ricketts, James Risch (R-Idaho), and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) sent a letter to the SEC raising their concerns about “corporate involvement in the stewardship and control of our federal lands” and allowing foreign investment in U.S. natural assets and the potential for attracting the United States’ adversaries.

The NAC proposal also drew backlash from 25 state attorneys general and sparked congressional investigations.

Twenty-three state financial officers also sent a letter to the SEC requesting that the 21-day period granted for public comment on the new rule be extended for an additional 60 days.

The group of 31 House representatives, led by Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.), demanded an extension of the public comment period due to the rule’s far-reaching implications for the management and use of public and private lands. The letter also questioned the SEC’s right “to confer ‘management authority’ over federal lands.”

Members of American Stewards of Liberty launched a media campaign to raise awareness about the new rule and its potential impact. They wrote op-eds and appeared on national podcasts.

A handful of organizations, such as the Financial Fairness Alliance, the Kansas Natural Resource Coalition, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the BlueRibbon Coalition, submitted their comments on the new rule to the SEC. Other national groups like the Eagle Forum, Sovereignty Coalition, and American Agri-Women set up online portals to help people contact their elected representatives and submit comments to the SEC. Some influencers spread the word on social media.

The SEC established an additional 21-day comment period, and, according to American Stewards of Liberty, more than 2,000 comments were submitted during that period, with 99 percent opposing the new rule.

On Jan. 17, the SEC withdrew the proposed rule to enlist NACs as publicly traded companies on the NYSE.

Controlling Natural Resources

Based on the rule filed by the NYSE, the ecosystem services in American national parks could be enrolled in these natural asset companies by the federal government that owns them, Ms. Byfield said.

The rule also stipulates that the governments could create these natural asset companies, she added.

As for private land, a lot of it has “federal conservation programs on [it] or conservation easements held in perpetuity by land trusts,” and these conservation easements are worth billions of dollars, Ms. Byfield explained. “That’s a separate right that they can enroll with or without the landowner’s consent.”

Valuation

“There hasn’t been a landowner that thought they were selling their ecosystem service rights, because that is something new, created out of thin air,” Ms. Byfiled said.

The market is driven by what consumers will buy and what they will not buy, she noted. Therefore, prices in the marketplace are set based on buyers’ perceived value of a product or service.

However, those ecosystem services are not something “people will buy or not buy,” Ms. Byfield said.

The NYSE rule tried to create a new class of assets whose value would be decided arbitrarily by a bureaucrat who could say that “the air you breathe is worth X and the air I breathe is worth Y,” Ms. Byfiled said.

It is based on the assumption that “by the act of conserving the land, they are increasing those natural processes like pollination, clean air, and photosynthesis,” Ms. Byfield said. “Therefore, it is the work of the land trust or the federal government protecting the lands that is creating this new value and [increasing] the ecosystem services.”

How NACs work

NACs are a market vehicle to quantify and monetize natural processes so that those with the money can invest in them, Ms. Byfield said.

Had the SEC approved the NAC rule, NACs could have been established all over the United States. Then, the SEC would have to convey management authority over those natural processes or “ecosystem services” to the NACs, she said.

A sign at the south entrance to Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, courtesy of the National Park Service, Department of the Interior, USA, circa 1965. Archive Photos/Getty Images

For example, if the federal government decided to enroll a national park, such as Yellowstone, into an NAC, then the investors who own that NAC—a private company—would have the management authority over that national park.

“That is what this rule was doing. Instead of the National Park Service managing the land, now you have a third party, a private entity, that also has some form of management authority over these lands.”

Ms. Byfield also pointed out that “the SEC doesn’t have the authority to decide who will manage our lands or the ecosystem services on our lands.”

In their letter criticizing the SEC rule creating NACs, the state attorneys general wrote, “This type of decision, particularly given its vast economic consequences, must be left to Congress and not the [SEC] or the NYSE.”

Foreign Investment

Ms. Byfield noted that the SEC rule encourages foreign investment into NACs, which could harm the development and production of American natural resources and compromise national security.

Areas rich in critical minerals, like around the Grand Canyon, could also be enrolled in NACs, Ms. Byfield said. If a Chinese investor or a Chinese state-owned fund invested in them, it would have “management authority over those resources,” she explained.

A view from the North Rim of Grand Canyon in a file photo. Bill Cox/Epoch Times

“NACs have to manage the resources that were enrolled for sustainability and to increase the production of the ecosystem services,” Ms. Byfield said, and it involves ensuring that there would be no oil, gas, or mineral extraction on the enrolled lands.

For foreign adversaries, a NAC would have been the perfect means to prevent America from developing its resources, while they exploited their own and enhanced their global standing, Ms. Byfield said.

Since the goal of the NAC is to increase the ecosystem services, all productive uses of the land enrolled have to be decreased or eliminated, she said.

If a NAC enrolled privately owned lands, then the landowners cannot farm or ranch on that land anymore under the sustainability requirements, so they cannot make a living off that land and will have to sell or abandon it, Ms. Byfield said. The NAC would then acquire that property directly.

The caveat is that an NAC could be delisted from the NYSE as an NAC if it violated these sustainability requirements, she said.

So, all that a NAC has to do is to start drilling or mining the land, she said. When the company gets delisted as an NAC, it will no longer be prohibited from doing any of that, and it can profit from American natural resources, she added.

After getting rid of the small landowners, or at least getting control of the land of the small landowners through the NAC, ”the world elite would be able to profit from those protected lands,” Ms.Byfiled warned.

Kevin Stocklin contributed to this report.