We set forth the organization’s philosophy in the Green Cross International Charter:
Life is precious. All forms of life have their own intrinsic value and share our planetary home in an interdependent community in which all parts are essential to the functioning of the whole. We have a moral and ethical obligation to preserve life in its integrity and maintain our planet healthy and secure for present and future generations.
The process began of forming national branches of the organization, in the course of which I visited many countries and took part in their founding conferences. Green Cross International sees its mission as being to respond to the combined challenges of security, poverty and environmental degradation. To achieve this, we:
• promote legal, ethical and behavioural norms that ensure basic changes in the values, actions and attitudes of government, the private sector and civil society, necessary to develop a sustainable global community;
• contribute to the prevention and resolution of conflicts arising from environmental degradation and shortages of natural resources;
• provide assistance to people affected by the environmental consequences of wars, conflicts and man made calamities.[1]
For many years, I served as president of Green Cross International and chairman of its board of directors. In 2008, we reorganized the management: I retained the honorary position of founding president and remained a member of the Board of Directors; Alexander Likhotal (Russia) was elected president and Jan Kulczyk (Poland) was elected chairman of the board. I am grateful to them and to dozens of other people who have supported me in this major project and who today continue it with energy and enthusiasm.
During its existence, Green Cross International has initiated a series of programmes for ‘environmental healing’ of the Earth. One of the most important has been the Legacy Programme, which had the aim of dealing with the environmental legacy of the Cold War and the arms race (eliminating stockpiles of chemical weapons, toxic contamination, etc.). In 2000, I undertook a major initiative to overcome the inertia building up in the process of eliminating chemical weapons, of which the United States and Russia had together accumulated more than 65,000 tonnes. Destruction of Russia’s stockpiles of chemical weapons had been halted due to lack of funds, and also as the result of demands and questions raised by other parties to the UN Convention on the Elimination of Chemical Weapons, which had not been addressed for several years.
I sent letters to the leaders of Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and other countries appealing to them to give firm financial commitments in relation to the destruction of chemical weapons. In response, the Russian government substantially increased funding for its programme. Important steps were also undertaken by the US government.
Another important Green Cross International project was the Earth Dialogues, a series of public forums devoted to the ethical aspects of sustainable development. The first dialogue was held in Lyon in 2002, with the French prime minister and several other ministers participating. Lyon was followed by Barcelona, New York and Lahore, and similar events were held in Russia and Italy. In 2006, I participated in an Earth Dialogue in Brisbane.
My work in the international environmental movement led to involvement in the Earth Charter project, whose aim was to draft a kind of environmental code of best practice for the planet, a declaration of basic principles and values to enable the creation of a just, sustainable and peaceful global community in the twenty-first century.
The idea of an Earth Charter was first put forward in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission). It was supported in 1992 by the then secretary-general of the UN, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, but it was only in 1994 that Maurice Strong, secretary-general of the Earth Summit, and I, through organizations each of us had founded (the Earth Council and Green Cross International), breathed life into the project as a civil society initiative. The government of the Netherlands offered to provide financial support.
In 1996, a commission under the co-chairmanship of myself and Maurice Strong was set up to draft the charter. In April 1998, the draft was discussed at a session of the General Assembly of Green Cross International. I set out my views on the charter’s goals and objectives, and also delivered a major paper called ‘A Sustainable Future’.
The final version of the Earth Charter was approved at a meeting of its drafting commission at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The charter was officially presented to the international community on 29 June 2000 at a launch ceremony in the Peace Palace in The Hague in the presence of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. The General Conference of UNESCO subsequently approved a resolution supporting it.
The efforts of ecologists and the environmentally aware section of the world community to get the idea of environmentally sustainable development put into practice ran into major obstacles: a lack of understanding of some, the vested interests of others, the short-termism and narrow-minded pragmatism of yet others. Although supported by the international community in the form of the United Nations, which fleshed it out into a specific action programme, the ideas were pushed to one side by a single-minded determination to promote the free play of market forces, which sent global development in the wrong direction, towards reduced sustainability.
This seriously alarmed many people, including me. I tried to draw the attention of politicians and the public to the need to implement the concept and values of sustainable development. I proposed, inter alia, to attend the ‘Rio + 10’ conference in Johannesburg in 2002, prepared the notes for a speech, but was unfortunately not able to attend.
I greatly regretted being unable to speak in Johannesburg. We at Green Cross International were very concerned that the forum might end in failure. I sent more than 100 letters to heads of state and governments outlining the standpoint of our organization and urging them not to allow the conference to be a failure. I received replies from the presidents of Russia, France and Poland, from the prime minister of Great Britain and many others. They all recognized the need to put environmental issues at the heart of politics and the social agenda.
More than 100 heads of state and governments went to Johannesburg, but many who were expected refused to attend. This was a bad sign, and indeed, hopes that the Johannesburg summit would be a turning point failed to materialize. Disagreements and vested interests again prevailed. The documents adopted were largely declarative, lacking specifics or binding provisions, and were really just one more disappointment.
The water crisis
Given the situation, action on specific environmental problems took on particular importance. One of those I had to deal with was the issue of the growing global shortage of fresh water. In July 2002, I took part in an international conference on Water for the World, organized through Green Cross International. The following year I took part in the World Water Forum. These began to be held regularly and attracted authoritative experts and politicians able to propose practical solutions.
In February 2009, in Brussels, an international conference on Peace with Water was held at the European Parliament, on the initiative of the World Political Forum. Its purpose was to develop proposals on conservation of water resources for consideration by those taking part in negotiations on a new international climate agreement. The proposals were presented in a Memorandum for a World Protocol on Water.
The water crisis, I said at the conference, is a combination of environmental, social, economic and political factors. According to UN estimates, nearly 900 million people do not have access to clean water and 2.6 billion live in insanitary conditions. Demand for water is constantly rising. Of the water in developing countries, 80 per cent is used for agricultural irrigation. The problem is being aggravated by global climate change. Access to water is beginning to cause international conflicts. Politics is being slow to respond to what is truly an emergency situation, despite numerous studies and reports from experts and environmental organizations. As founding president of Green Cross International, I coauthored such a report, together with three former political leaders of Sweden, Botswana and the Philippines, back in 2000. It was well received, but its recommendations have not been implemented.
1
Charter of Green Cross International, Geneva, 16 January 2010, p. 1; http://www.gcint.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/GCI_Charter_2010.pdf. Accessed 21 August 2015.