A House committee voted to strongly rebuke a United Nations sustainability initiative Tuesday, one day after hearing more than an hour of testimony against it.

With minimal resistance, House Federal and State Committee approved a resolution “opposing and exposing the radical nature of United Nations Agenda 21 and its destructiveness to the principles of the founding documents of the United States of America.”

The resolution, supported by Rep. Greg Smith, R-Olathe; Rep. Forrest Knox, R-Altoona; and Rep. Dennis Hedke, R-Wichita, is now available for a full House vote with only a few days remaining in the legislative session.

“Of course we’re pleased with the committee’s handling of the resolution and the outcome,” Hedke said. “It’s late in the session, but I’m hopeful the leadership will allow it to come above the line for a full debate.”

Agenda 21 (referencing the 21st century), encourages governments to adopt environmentally sustainable development through a number of methods, including conservation, management and changing consumption patterns.

Smith, Knox and Hedke described the nonbinding U.N. agreement signed by 178 nations in 1992 as an unauthorized power grab by radical environmentalists bent on ending private property rights in favor of communism. They said it is pervading local governments and is “an aggressive attack on individual liberty and the foundation of our country.”

Implementation of Agenda 21 is voluntary, and according to Principle 2 of the Declaration on Environment and Development that came out of the 1992 conference, the nations who signed it have “the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies.”