Water, like religion and ideology, has the power to move millions of people. Since the very birth of human civilization, people have moved to settle close to it. People move when there is too little of it. People move when there is too much of it. People journey down it. People write, sing and dance about it. People fight over it. And all people, everywhere and every day, need it.

A New World Order is required to deal with the Climate Change crisis.

The time has come to choose a new direction of global development, to opt for a new civilization.

Lake Baikal in Russia has 25 percent of the freshwater resources of the world. Sixty-five percent of the Russian ecosystems are in danger. So let's preserve what we have, and let's take good care of nature.

What happened to the Soviet Union happened mainly for domestic reasons. It was a failure of the model based on a command economy and dictatorship. The rejection of freedom and democracy, the decisionmaking monopoly of one party, and the monopoly of one ideology all had a chilling effect on the country. That model turned out to be incapable of making structural changes. It did not open up ways for initiative and was overly centralized.

It would be naive to think that the problems plaguing mankind today can be solved with means and methods which were applied or seemed to work in the past.

Sometimes its difficult to accept, to recognise ones own mistakes, but one must do it. I was guilty of overconfidence and arrogance, and I was punished for that.