Vale Mikhail Gorbachev, planetary hero

Mikhail Gorbachev died on August 30th, 2022.

The former Pres­id­ent of the Uni­on of Soviet Social­ist Repub­lics (USSR) is best remembered as the man who engin­eered the peace­ful trans­form­a­tion of the USSR and the open­ing of the Ber­lin Wall.

Less known is the fact that dur­ing his incred­ible life he col­lab­or­ated closely with Maurice Strong. Togeth­er they launched the Earth Charter — a com­pact between plan­et and people — and pro­moted it around the world.

Through­out the 1990s, Maurice Strong, through the Earth Coun­cil, and Mikhail Gorbachev, through Green Cross, built a deep friend­ship; shar­ing offices in Geneva lead­ing up to Strong’s 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

Today, with the sup­port of UNESCO, the Earth Charter has a thriv­ing glob­al out­reach par­tic­u­larly focused on sus­tain­ab­il­ity edu­ca­tion for tomorrow’s leaders.

SUN^x Malta, inspired by Maurice Strong and a Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goal (SDG) 17 part­ner of the Earth Coun­cil, salutes the passing of a Plan­et­ary Hero.

Pro­fess­or Geof­frey Lip­man
Pres­id­ent, SUN^x Malta

Fea­tured image (top of post): Mikhail Gorbachev on May 12, 2010 by Veni (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr. “GT” cropped and desat­ur­ated the picture.

About SUN^x Malta — Strong Universal Network

SUN^x Malta is a leg­acy for the late Maurice Strong, fath­er of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. Its goal is to advance Cli­mate Friendly Travel (CFT) ~ low car­bon : SDG linked : Par­is 1.5.

SUN^x has a core part­ner­ship with Malta’s Min­istry of Tour­ism & Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion and Malta Tour­ism Author­ity to advance CFT, to cre­ate a UNFC­CC-linked CFT Registry and to pro­mote CFT Edu­ca­tion. It plans to put in place 100,000 Strong Cli­mate Cham­pi­ons by 2030 across all UN States.