The Technograph

Brian Tokar, acclaimed environmentalist and Director of Vermont’s Institute for Social Ecology, presented the issue of climate justice on September 28th at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign to a small but attentive crowd listening with notebooks and pens. Tokar said that high-income countries were most “responsible for destruction (of the environment)” while those who contributed least to global warming were suffering most severely from the its consequences.

“The hardest hit victims are those in poverty and underdeveloped countries,” Tokar said.

Tokar spoke as a Guest-in-Residence at Unit One, Allen Hall (a University residence hall). He gave a speech every evening of his residency at 7p.m. from September 27th to October 1st on different topics relating to current environmental issues, sponsored by the Office of Sustainability.

Tokar began by stating that the evidence of global warming is unequivocal. This evidence included data compiled from thousands of studies, primarily in the form of graphs that Tokar presented in his PowerPoint slides.

“The data from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) struck me the most,” he said.

The MA was called upon by the United Nations (UN) to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and the scientific basis for action needed to enhance the conservation. What was so “striking” were bar graphs showing how the number of flood events and major wildfires by continent and decade had been drastically increasing since the 1950s.

The risk of being affected by natural disaster rose dramatically in developing countries during the last two decades from one out of 40 to one out of 19. “That’s pretty staggering,” Tokar said in a high-pitched voice.

Surface warming offered more evidence of global warming. The increase in carbon dioxide had been ten times the global population growth and even if emission of carbon dioxide stopped immediately, “surface warming would continue because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for 500 years,” Tokar said.

Some key impacts of global average temperature change that Tokar listed included global decline in crop productivity, increased water stress in Africa, and future floods in Asian and African major deltas. Tokar also told the audience how global warming is affecting health aspects globally.

“There is an increase in malnutrition and the burden of diarrheal diseases. The greatest burden lies on people with higher exposure and lower

adaptive capacity,” he said, referring to those living in poverty.

The climate justice movement originated in communities directly affected by global warming, especially the indigenous population in Borneo and Malaysia. Tokar described these people as “rainforest dwellers” who resisted the destruction of their living environments.

“They have come together to tell stories to countries responsible for destruction (of the natural habitat), which is the single most influential element in the development of awareness on climate justice,” he said.

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