Greenpeace campaigners protest against Monsanto's patenting of Indian wheat, in Germany.
You think this is an exaggeration? Well consider this.
In Bhopal, India more than 8,000 people died in the first three
days after 40 tonnes of lethal gas spilled out from Union Carbide's
pesticide factory in December 1984. People woke in their homes to
fits of coughing, their lungs filling with fluid. 520,000 people
were exposed to poisonous gases. 150,000 victims are chronically
ill, and even now one person dies every two days. Union Carbide
merged with Dow Chemical Corporation two years ago and has ceased
to exist as an entity while the present owners Dow refuse to accept
any pending liabilities in Bhopal including clean-up of the
abandoned site.
In Kodaikanal, India, Hindustan Lever, a subsidiary of Unilever
Plc, an Anglo-Dutch multinational dumped mercury waste from its
thermometer factory in the surrounding forests and on an innocent
local community. When the scandal was exposed, first the company
denied that there was a problem and later fudged facts and figures
until the Indian authorities forced them to come clean. Since then
Unilever has retrieved and sent back to USA some of the waste for
disposal but are shying away from compensating affected workers and
further environmental remediation measures.
Monsanto, one of the world's largest pesticide companies,
continues to sell its genetically engineered seeds to farmers
around the world despite growing evidence of failure of crops like
Bt cotton, that has reduced once well-to-do farmers in the
developing world to penury and poverty while the threat of
contamination of indigenous species by GE seeds increases
everyday.
Bayer AG, a German transnational continues to manufacture and
sell phased out pesticides like Methyl Parathion (brand name
Folidol/Metacid) in Asia despite an assurance to their European
investors and stake holders that they would stop manufacturing
these organo-phosphate poisons.
Ship-owning companies (and indeed, their countries) like
Bergesen (Norway), and Chandris (Greece) meanwhile, regularly
violate international and national laws and dump their hazardous
wastes at ship-breaking yards in India, Pakistan, China, Turkey and
Bangladesh. The voluntary guidelines issued by International Marine
Organisation are not enough and it is imperative that these
guidelines are made mandatory to make the ship-owners liable and
responsible.
In the era of globalization, multinational companies
increasingly move around assets, products and wastes on a global
chessboard to maximize their profits and minimize their costs.
These companies are using differences and loopholes in national
environmental and health laws for example to export pesticides and
destructive technologies to poorer countries to the detriment of
local communities. What international body oversees them, or sets
rules for their behaviour, or holds them accountable when they
transgress?
It is no longer just the conspiracy theorists who believe our
world is increasingly ruled and ruined by large multinational
corporations.
The World Trade Organisation has supplanted environmental
treaties and regulations. Corporations have become accountable only
under the rules of a free market, free trade and a free for all on
human rights and the environment.
The state of our environment has not improved, in fact it has
deteriorated. The gap between the world's rich and poor has
widened. Instead of providing developing countries with the tools
for sustainable development, corporations have pushed their dirty
technologies and polluting industries on to some of the world's
poorest countries. A recent UN report revealed that Exxon, with $63
billion, is worth more than Peru or New Zealand. General Electric
more than Kuwait. Shell is worth more than Morocco or Cuba.
In the past ten years, corporations have not only resisted
environmental challenges, they have lobbied to water down
international treaties and even succeeded in getting countries to
pull out of environmental agreements altogether. They have
maintained their unsustainable practices in all sectors. It is
apparent that more than just voluntary measures are needed to
control these corporations.
A recent report by WWF states that if we continue at current
levels of consumption we will use up all of the Earth's resources
within 50 years, and we will need two more planets to meet our
resource needs. We either take urgent action to save the planet, or
we get off.
The UN Environmental Programme agrees that "the state of the
planet is getting worse." They say "there is a growing gap between
the efforts of business and industry to reduce their impact on the
environment and the worsening state of the planet."
At the root of our environmental problems are the unsustainable
practices of the corporations that shape our economies. But what is
the good of a short-term healthy economy if we can't drink the
water, eat the foods in the fields or breathe the air?
Current systems of governance in Asia (as elsewhere) are proving
to be deficient against the activities of abusive multinational
corporations. To roll back the excessive powers of corporations and
to pressure governments to check corporate abuse and prosecute
corporate crimes, greater public participation is a must. The
Rainbow Warrior's Corporate Accountability Tour of India is part of
a global movement to change the climate of opinion against abusive
corporations and to turn the tide in favour of fundamental human
rights.
Corporations need to be held accountable for their actions that
are destroying the planet, destroying people's lives around the
globe.
There is only one answer. We must stand up to the corporations.
Our governments must agree on international, legally binding rules
for corporate responsibility, accountability and liability: a set
of rules that business must follow, and governments must
enforce.
The list of rules is long, but so are the crimes.
The world needs corporations to be held accountable to the
following laws - no matter where they operate in the world.
Greenpeace is calling upon the Indian Government to endorse the
Bhopal Principles on Corporate Responsibility, which call on
Multinational Corporations to:
· Accept liability for environmental damage and compensate
victims of pollution;
· Accept liability for the damage, no matter when it happens,
what the cause or who in the corporation is responsible;
· Accept responsibility for damage and injury beyond national
borders including accidents in the oceans and atmosphere;
· Ensure that they do not infringe upon basic human rights;
· Disclose all information regarding releases into the
environment to the public;
· Protect human and social rights including the highest
standards for rights to health care and a clean environment;
· Avoid influence over governments, combat bribery and practice
transparency;
· Allow states to maintain their sovereignty over their own food
supply;
· Implement a precautionary principle and take preventative
action before environmental damages or health effects are incurred;
and
· Promote and practice clean and sustainable development