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Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union, has launched an
organisation to provide scientific expertise to countries during
environmental emergencies. Called Green Cross International, the
organisation plans to employ 100 people in The Hague, in the Netherlands,
and in Geneva, Switzerland.

For now, Green Cross employs only about 20 people, as it searches for public
and private sponsors, says Andreas Eggenberg, the organisation’s deputy
director. He says Green Cross will focus on ‘changing people’s values’ about
the environment through education campaigns. It will also promote
international environmental law, ‘including something like a Geneva
Convention for the environment’.

As for disaster relief, ‘we won’t be a fire brigade’, says Eggenburg. He
says Green Cross wants to ‘facilitate the work of existing organisations’,
not compete with them. It is starting to compile a database of scientists
with the expertise to help in various environmental emergencies. Such a
database exists in the US but nowhere else, says Eggenberg.