Life is sacred. All forms of life have their own intrinsic value and share our planetary home in an interdependent community. All parts of this community are essential to the functioning of the whole.

The beauty of the Earth and its life is food for the human spirit, inspiring human consciousness with wonder, joy and creativity.

Human beings are not outside or above the community of life. We have not woven the web of life, we are but a strand in it. We depend on the whole for our very existence.

For the first time in history, human beings have the capacity to damage, knowingly or unknowingly, the ecological balances on which all life depends. The crisis is urgent.

We therefore have a special responsibility to prevent destruction and waste for short-term utilitarian reasons and to restore now the damage that we have already done. Each individual has both a personal and a collective responsibility within his or her own community.

We have an obligation to preserve life in its integrity and diversity and to maintain our planetary home as a healthy and secure abode for present generations and the generations yet to come.

Therefore, we, the representatives of many nationalities from all continents in the Earth, based on the initial charter adopted at the first Board meeting in Kyoto, Japan, on 18-19 April 1993, and modifications adopted in The Hague, May 30, 1995 under the leadership of President Mikhail Gorbachev, founder and first President of Green Cross have united in Green Cross International.