Green Cross International (GCI) grew out of a January 1990
address in Moscow by then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail
Gorbachev to the Global Forum on Environment and Development for
Survival. At that event, Gorbachev proposed the creation of an
organization that could apply the medical-emergency response
model of the International Red Cross to ecological and
environmental problems that transcended national boundaries. In
June 1992, delegates at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro
mandated Gorbachev (whose Soviet Union had by then dissolved) to
create and launch such an organization. At the same time, Swiss
National Council MP Roland Wiederkehr founded a “World Green
Cross” which had a similar objective. The two groups merged in
1993 to form GCI, which was formally launched in Kyoto on April
18 of that year. GCI's mission is “to respond to the combined
challenges of security, poverty and environmental degradation to
ensure a sustainable and secure future.” Calling for a
“concerted” international effort to “use