Manifesto for the Earth

Mikhail Gorbachev

Clairview Books, 2006, 147 pp., – ISBN 1905570023

David Lorimer

Perestroika for the 21^st Century

Mikhail Gorbachev is what would in the 19^th century have been called a ‘world-historical figure’ whose expanding vision now includes the future of nature and humanity as a whole. In this book he summarises the story of his political career, and how he became involved in ecological activism, setting up Green Cross International in 1992. His childhood was spent in harsh circumstances: in 1933 nearly half the population of his native village died of starvation, including two of his sisters and one of his father’s brothers. He describes of formative episode in March 1943 when, at the age of 12, he and a group of young lads came across the decomposing bodies of a unit of soldiers. This face of war was permanently imprinted on his memory. Out of his early experience emerges a strong sense of social injustice, which he carried into his political career. He also refers to his mystical feelings towards Nature. At the beginning of the book, he identifies the three interlinked major global challenges as security, poverty and environmental degradation.

Gorbachev writes that it was only when he came to power in 1985 that he realised the full extent of ecological devastation within the Soviet Union. He concluded that the lack of public opinion had permitted leaders of the country to perpetrate ‘unbelievable outrages.’ As readers will remember, he then pioneered a policy of glasnost, perestroika and technological acceleration. For ecological reasons, he closed 1,300 factories, even though some of them were producing essential goods. Then came the huge challenge of Chernobyl, which turned him into ‘a different person.’ It was a decisive test for the new policy of glasnost, and gave him a new conviction that technological processes which might have a negative effect on people require supervision from society.

Since 1992, Gorbachev has pursued his wider aims following the Río Earth Summit. He looks back over the past 15 years with a mixture of disquiet and disappointment. For instance, the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals are in his view the stipulation of the minimum requirements for a decent human life. The fact that the road to achieving these goals has been blocked by a lack of political will leads him to conclude that we need new ethical approaches as well as a radical restructuring of the UN and other international institutions. As many other writers like Ervin Laszlo have observed, ‘we need to bridge the gap between our consciousness and the challenges of our time. This turnaround must begin with changes in the human spirit, and reprioritisation of our value system, including relations between people and the interrelationship between humanity and nature.’ However, as we know, this easier said than done.

His suggestion for a world Council of Elders has been informally taken up by a number of groups such as the club of Budapest, of which he is an honorary member, and the recent creation of a World Future Council. His foundation and Green Cross International have been active in the number of areas, including the ecological consequences of war (Gorbachev is fully aware of the devastation caused in various places like the former Yugoslavia and Iraq by depleted uranium), and water as a source of conflict. He is a strong supporter of the Earth Charter, which is printed in full in this book. Its preamble states that the protection of Earth’s vitality, diversity and beauty is a sacred trust, that human development is primarily about being more, not having more, and that in order to realise the aspirations of the future, we must decide to live with a sense of universal responsibility, identifying ourselves with the Earth community as well as our local communities.

The way forward demands a change of mind and of heart, which Gorbachev himself has demonstrated in his life’s work. Now is the time to revive the annual meetings of the State of the World Forum, which has not met since 2000. It provided a meeting place for the new thinking of the cultural creatives and helped create a sense of momentum and change. This thinking needs in turn to penetrate the media, since there are millions of people throughout the world who are aware of the need for radical reorientation. As Sir Crispin Tickell has rightly observed, we need leadership from above, pressure from below and arguably a few benign catastrophes to act as a stimulus to reflection then action.