Mikhail S. Gorbachev President, Green Cross International
One of those who preceded me at this podium is a marshal and I am just
a reserve colonel. Another person who preceded me is Matt Peterson,
my young friend and environmental partner. He could say to you, "Well,
I was a student just a few years ago." Well, unlike he, I could
say, "Well, it was a long, long time ago that I was a student."
But it was then that I was shaped in many ways and wherever I go on
foreign trips, whenever I am invited to go to any country I always ask
the organizers to arrange for me a meeting with the students. This is
my desire always, to have a meeting with the young people. Today I will
be speaking with you about environmental issues and I think you the
students, the university people, are the best audience to discuss these
issues. My goal is to urge you to take a real interest in these issues
because we are living at a time when most important decisions are being
made. The future is yours, and, therefore, I will be speaking to you
about the environment; I will be speaking to you about the future of
the world and I think those two are very closely linked. I will be speaking
to the audience that I think has the greatest stake in these things.
Limited Planet
Even at the beginning of this century, mankind was already exerting
a great pressure on the environment, on nature. But during this century,
enormous changes have occurred. It took ten thousand years of human
history to reach at the beginning of this century the level of sixty
billion dollars of the annual gross economic product. Today, at the
end of the century, world economy produces the same gross product in
one day, which gives you an idea of the kind of pressure that is exerted
by this tremendous human economic activity on our environment, on Planet
Earth. At the beginning of this century, there was one billion people
living on earth; today more than 5.5 billion people live on the earth
and if present tendencies continue, then toward the middle of the next
century, the population of the world will be twelve billion people.
In the beginning of this century, we were consuming 340 cubic kilometers
of water a day. Today, we consume 4000 cubic kilometers of water and
the world fresh water capacity is evaluated at 12500 cubic kilometers
per year. I could go on listing those changes that happened, the kind
of expansion that happened during this century but I think it's enough
with what I've already said.
Doctor Gorshkov, a Russian professor from St. Petersburg concluded
as early as the mid-nineteen seventies, and a group of American scholars
made the same conclusion in nineteen eighty: we need a new paradigm
of development, a new way of development. Their conclusion is that the
biosphere develops, evolves, according to its own laws. Those laws cannot
be abolished. Furthermore, we cannot create a better mechanism that
would provide for the survival of mankind. So the only solution for
human kind is to fit into the corridor of what is possible which means
that we should limit the pressure that we exert on the biosphere. It
takes about a decade to develop a significant new technology. Although
I am not a scientist I know from scientists that it takes ten thousand
years for new species to emerge on earth. Today, it is clear that a
technology centered society has clashed with the needs of preserving
the environment, with nature.
Five years after the Rio Summit
In Rio de Janeiro, we had a conference called "Rio + 5 Forum",
a conference which was attended by representatives of non-governmental
organizations from dozens of countries that came together to review
the developments during the five years since the Rio Earth Summit. They
concluded that despite the declaration adopted five years ago in Rio
de Janeiro by heads of state and government, despite the commitments
adopted at that time, and despite the recognition of the need to change
the relationship between humankind and nature, during those five years
no fundamental change has occurred. No change for the better has occurred
to improve the relationship between man and nature, humankind and the
environment. Certain changes have indeed occurred. I recently read the
report of the US president's council on sustainable development and
a similar report by the Russian government about what they have done
since 1992 and I believe that those are very solid papers but reading
them and thinking about what is being done for the environment, I am
very concerned, I am very alarmed. I think that the US Council on Sustainable
Development report is perhaps overly optimistic. This is probably due
to the fact that over the past few years, certainly in the past 25 years
a lot has been done a lot has been accomplished in the US at the level
of local government, at the level of state and at the national level.
But it is my impression that people in the United States hope that they
will be able to cope with the situation themselves, that they will be
able to isolate themselves from the environmental problems of others.
To me, that sounds unconvincing. It is not possible to create an environmental
promised land in one country. USA is a vast country, a country that
is linked with the entire world, a country that is doing commerce both
ways with all countries. And if you have it good here while things are
bad everywhere, that will not be a solution to the environmental problems.
And I would very much hope that our organization, Global Green, USA,
working together with research centers and academic centers such as
Georges Washington University and the Environmental Institute of your
university will be able to help people in this country to become aware
of the global nature of the environmental challenge.
The similar Russian report on the environment is more candid and more
dramatic. But that report, too, doesn't provide a solution to the problem.
In Russia, the problem today is not environmental awareness. There is
a lot of environmental awareness; there is more of it today than ever
before. But, the problem in Russia is the funding, the financing of
environmental problems. We see an environmental crisis throughout Russia.
The legacy of the Cold War, pollution of the rivers, the advance of
the desert, soil erosion, deforestation, which are severe problems.
All of this creates a situation of enormous environmental strain.
There are few countries that can be mentioned as having reached a certain
level of environmental comfort, better than in Russia or even in the
United States. I would mention the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden.
But in most other countries, the problems are extremely urgent. The
lack of firm action by government is first of all a reflection of a
failure of awareness of the kinds of problems that are already knocking
at our doors. Some people tend to think that, as happened in the past,
things will kind of take care of themselves, things will improve of
their own motion. Others think that environmental problems are somewhere
far from them. The underestimation of the gravity of the problems results
in the fact that public opinion is not reacting strongly enough. And,
as a result, public opinion is not exerting sufficient pressure on the
politicians and on the business community.
The Earth Charter Process
There's too much talk today about the West having won the Cold War,
too much talk that "laisser faire" economics is a solution
to all problems, that we've reached almost the end of history, that
there is a solution, that there is a panacea for all countries and that
is to follow a western road of development globally. After a lot of
pain, we have abandoned a Communist utopia, but it seems that a new
utopia is being imposed. Geo-political games are being played instead
of taking advantage of the opportunities opened up by the end of the
Cold War in order to find solutions and responses to the global problems
and the number one global problem is the problem of the environment.
No geo-political maneuvering will assure the world's survival; that
kind of maneuvering cannot respond to the environmental challenge. The
environment will be on top of the agenda in the 21st century and this
is why, over the past three years, we have given so much effort to work
on the Earth Charter, the Earth Charter that we are preparing together
with the Earth Council.
We see that the concepts on which the industrial civilization was based
for two centuries, that those concepts have exhausted their potential;
they have run their course and that means that we need a new set of
concepts, a new set of values. In the age of enlightenment, man was
regarded as king of nature. This dominion of man over nature now has
brought the world to the brink of enormous environmental crisis. Man
is just a pawn of nature; mankind should think about how to live in
harmony with the rest of nature. And we now have a decent standard of
living in the world only for about a third of mankind. The others live
in poverty: this is unacceptable. The world is facing a profound environmental
crisis and that means that we need a set of commandments for the future.
After three years working on the Earth Charter, and after working together
on this draft with a large group of scholars and citizens from many
countries, we were able to adopt in Rio a preliminary draft of the Earth
Charter. It is a short document, consisting of 18 principles. We will
now be presenting that draft to the public and we will be asking for
suggestions and proposals and a year later we will re-write this paper,
we will ask the best writers to help us in re-writing that paper and
that draft will be presented to the United Nations. This paper will
provide goals for the future and it is an appeal to humankind; it is
a tribute to our common birthplace: Planet Earth. It is based on a simple
thought: there was a time when mankind did not exist; mankind appeared
on earth as a result of a long process of evolution and we should understand
that we are just one species and if we do not understand the signals
that the earth, that nature is sending to us then, like some other species,
we could vanish. We could disappear from the surface of the Earth.
Strong Signals
It was here in Washington that in the spring of 1992, just before the
Earth Summit, a group of scientists including 1500 major scientists,
more than 100 Nobel Prize winners, came together to state that unless
present trends of human development change in 30 or 40 years irreversible
changes may happen in the biosphere of the earth. This is not alarmist,
this is not panic mongering, this is science, this is scientific data.
We created Green Cross International in order to mobilize international
public opinion and to energize its awareness of the dangers to the environment.
We are setting up national Green Cross organizations and we have already
done so in 16 countries and our main goal is to help people understand
how bad the environmental situation is in the world. We want to help
citizens to develop their own position, their own civic position on
this issue which is, which will be the crucial issue of the next century.
Some people are saying that "laisser faire" economics and
free markets and business will provide all the solutions to the environmental
issues. I think this is quite improbable. If the only criterion for
the business community is efficiency and profits, if business does not
take into account the environment and the social issues, then I think
difficulties we are facing now will soon become enormous, bigger and
bigger. But what does it mean to limit the pressure on the environment?
Does it mean to just report the status quo? Does it mean to perpetuate
the differences between the wealthy and the poor? I think that most
of the world will not accept such locking in of poverty. And that means
that we need international economic cooperation that would provide new
technology, that would provide environmentally safe technology to the
third world countries that need those technologies in order to improve
their standard of living, to create jobs in those countries and also
to improve the state of the environment so we need that kind of investment
in the third world. Certainly no country can save itself alone and that
means that we need not only initiative, not only entrepreneurship and
competition, we need solidarity, solidarity within nations and solidarity
among nations.
In need of changes
If to those who think that westernization and consumerism can become
the blueprint for all the world - the third world in particular - then
my question is where do we find the resources to replicate the standard
of living here in the United States where a few percent of the global
population consumes 20 and more percent of the world energy and resources?
We already see trade wars, we already see increasing competition for
resources in the world. Access to natural resource and fair distribution
and use can only be solved if new forms of international economic cooperation
are found. This is an urgent problem for the United Nations and for
International Economic Organizations such as the World Bank or the International
Monetary Funds. I could provide even more arguments that come down to
this: we need a new kind of economic cooperation in the world, based
on increasing interdependence of nations. The shaping of a new scale
of values and action through cultural change through healthcare programs
and educational programs should also result in a new set of values for
the families. We will need a quick stabilization of global population
and to do so we need to persuade the people through cultural and educational
programs that for a certain transitional period families should limit
themselves to one child and then following stabilization of global population
to two children. The recent United Nations conference in Cairo in 1994
on population, has concluded that our Planet Earth can only withstand
the load of limited people. Some experts have given the amount of 7
billion people. So we have tremendous set of problems to solve now that
we know the carrying capacity of the Planet is dramatically limited.
I think we simply cannot afford to go on as we have been doing these
past five years after Rio without some fundamental action on these problems.
Today I had talks in the US Congress with various groups of US Congressmen.
I had similar discussions at the State Department with the members of
the various US government agencies involved in environmental affairs.
I've seen a good degree of understanding that we need to promote new
approaches to the environment, to work with the people for people to
increase the awareness of the situation, that we need a more responsible
attitude by the business community and the national environmental laws;
we also need international environmental institutions and international
environmental laws that would make the solutions to the environmental
problems possible that would manage the current environmental situation
and would avoid the predictable human, ecological and economic disasters.
Years ago when I was a student at the Moscow University Law School
there were a number of favorite phrases by students and jokes about
law and one of those jokes or phrases favored by the students was that
laws are like telegraph poles, you cannot jump over them but you can
bypass them. Environmental problems are of a kind that we cannot jump
over them, we cannot by pass them and we cannot postpone them. I urge
young people to support responsible environmental action by governments,
by business to convince them to change their attitudes and ways of governing
or making business because unless this is done we and you will be in
for a very hard times in the future. So I speak here to friends and
partners in hope for your partnership and cooperation in environmental
causes and let me assure you that we are ready for such cooperation
with your university, one of the foremost, one of the most prestigious
centers of scholarship in the world. Thank you for your attention.
Mikhaïl Gorbachev
