Green Justice: A Greeks Journey for Environmental Sustainability By Chris Blake NEW YORK - Laying in a South Pacic hospital

bed, 10,000 miles from his home in Athens, Greece, Nikos Anagnostakis wondered if researching the effects of climate change was worth his life. I was facing reality, Anagnostakis, alive and well in New York City, said. I was sick. I was in Vanuatu. The medical care couldnt help me. The doctors there couldnt help me. Anagnostakis arrived in Vanuatus capital, Port Vila, 1000 miles east of Australia, in July 2012 to research the effects of climate change on small island nations for his Athensbased non-government organization, Green Justice. The NGO aimed to come up with legal suggestions to help slow climate change, such as potential UN treaties and international laws. After just a few months there Anagnostakis contracted a virus that did a number on his body and that medical professionals in Vanuatu could not diagnose. He does not attribute the virus to the changing climate, but simply to being exposed to things in the South Pacic that his body had never encountered. He stayed in a Port Vila hospital for two weeks before doctors cleared him to y to Melbourne, Australia, the closest advanced hospital, to seek better treatment. The 183rd largest country in the world, according the CIA World Factbook, Vanuatu has just over 256,000 citizens. The island nation covers 4,706 square miles, roughly twice the size of Delaware, ranks 202nd out of 229 countries in GDP and features a literacy rate of just 74 percent, just below India and ahead of Cambodia. Green Justice, in cooperation with three other European environmental NGOs, selected Vanuatu because the consequences of climate change are clear on small islands. Rising sea levels have impacted the South Pacic more than arguably anywhere in the world. While the natives have heard of climate change, they do not grasp its impact on their home and what it is Anagnostakis said. They dont seem to know what is happening, thats the worst thing, he said. They believe that everything is good, but its not. Until one moment someone is going to tell them, Hey, we have to move somewhere. Lets go higher. That scenario became reality in 2005 for villagers on Tegua, one of the northern-most islands of Vanuatu, when the United Nations Environment Programme relocated them to higher ground deeper into the island. Their village was washed away by ooding and they became the rst climate change refugees.

Anagnostakis said he hoped that Green Justice would have success inuencing international environmental law because the well-being of nations like Vanuatu is at risk. The future is bad. They are in danger, he said. With the current situation and the incapability to reach a decision (at the UN Climate Change Conference) in Doha, (Qatar) they could endanger these islands. At the conference in Doha, world leaders voted to extend the Kyoto Protocol through 2020. Anagnostakis, however, argued that the Protocol does not impose enough limitations to make a dent in the ght against climate change. The idea is to continue to produce, but in a sustainable way. So update your technology, make it more environmentally friendly, he said. Now working for the UN in New York with an emphasis on small island developing states, Anagnostakis is hard at work writing proposals for new international law. Its a task he is uniquely qualied for, as he holds a law degree from Swansea University in Wales and a masters degree in environmental law from Tulane University. While content with his position in the Big Apple for now, Anagnostakis would like to return to Vanuatu, with his full health, to complete his research and eventually to go home to Greece and turn Green Justice into a global think tank on environmental law. He started Green Justice in Athens and wishes for it to continue there. The group has worked on projects in Greece such as lobbying for aid for the wild res in the northern part of the country and researching the environmental pros and cons of drilling for resources in the Aegean Sea. The nancial crisis has forced the NGO to focus on issues outside of Greece for the time being, as their donations have taken a hit with economic downturn. Reecting on his life-threatening illness that conned him to a month of bed rest in Australia, Anagnostakis displayed his unwavering dedication to the environment. If something bad happened was it worth it? he asked rhetorically. It was not worth it because we had not addressed the issues yet, so that was the problem. I would have died for nothing.