Word: gorbachev
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...diversity and the freedom that offers to talented people have helped open the society -- so long as individuals do not challenge the state. "There is more openness in China now," says a senior Western diplomat in Beijing, "than at any time in the past, and far more than under Gorbachev in Russia...
...meeting of the Global Forum in Moscow in 1990, when he was still Soviet President, Gorbachev proposed an organization roughly analogous to the International Red Cross to contend with environmental problems that cross national boundaries. Last year the Earth Summit in Rio passed a resolution establishing the International Green Cross, and six months later the Dutch government donated $1.1 million to get things going. At about the same time, Roland Wiederkehr, an environmentalist and member of the Swiss Federal Assembly, started the World Green Cross. Gracefully acknowledging Gorbachev's star power, Wiederkehr accepted the Russian's invitation to merge...
Since the organization's debut, Gorbachev and Wiederkehr have met with a parade of environmentalists to select pilot projects. Among the possibilities: a program to coordinate efforts to clean up the Volga River; an effort to protect the pristine Plitvicka Lakes National Park on the border between Serbia and Croatia from the fighting that has ravaged the Balkans; the establishment of a Geneva-based industry council that would help prevent chemical catastrophes like the gas leak that killed 2,000 in Bhopal, India; and an initiative to focus attention on problems that involve the use and disposal of toxic products...
...Gorbachev's prestige has helped attract Green Cross board members such as Javier Perez de Cuellar, former Secretary-General of the U.N., and former Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu. Other trustees range from astronomer Carl Sagan to Rene Felber, the former President of Switzerland. Ultimately, Gorbachev envisions a network of local, national, regional and international offices that will, as he puts it, "enhance and amplify" the work of other environmental groups. He also sees this network as a means of changing the "values" of human societies...
...that sounds vague, it is. Some activists grumble that the world does not need another environmental bureaucracy, particularly one put together in such an impromptu manner. Despite the Russian's passion for his new career, it is clear that he is learning on the job. Still, Gorbachev brings to his new job one irreplaceable asset: the respect of world leaders. Recently he wrote President Clinton to say, in effect, "I stopped nuclear testing; you can too." Says Green Cross board member Thor Heyerdahl (whose writings, beginning with Kon-Tiki, greatly influenced the former Soviet President): "Even though ! there are other...