Protest on the 17th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster.
The lessons of Bhopal are still waiting to be learned. With
increasing regularity, similar scenarios continue to be played out
around the world. Environmental disasters, both chronic and
immediate, induced by irresponsible corporate practices are
becoming more frequent. Transnational corporations have learned to
downplay damage, and focus attention and liability on the local
company to elude full criminal and civil liability.
To curb these abuses, governments must act on a global basis to
ensure that both transnational and national corporations are held
liable for their actions, particularly in developing countries and
countries with economies in transition where companies operate in
less regulated environments.
Not all companies operating in both the developing and developed
world fit this description. But many certainly do. Some routinely
fail to respond in an adequate manner to incidents, fail to
compensate and assist impacted communities, fail to meet their
obligations to clean up damaged environments and violate the rights
of workers and local residents by not monitoring or disclosing
essential information concerning their products and processes.
Bhopal is an icon for the need to change the way corporations
operate globally in rich and poor nations. There, safety measures
designed to prevent a gas leak had either malfunctioned or were
otherwise inadequate; the safety siren intended to alert the
community should an accident occur was turned off. This is
particularly irresponsible in light of the fact that storage of the
chemical being manufactured - methyl isocyanate (MIC) - is known to
be extremely risky. In the aftermath of the disaster, Union Carbide
refused to provide full information regarding the nature of the
poisoning which meant that doctors were unable to properly treat
those exposed. Such behaviour is no less than criminal, but it is
becoming increasingly difficult to seek justice and to hold these
companies accountable and liable for their crimes.
Union Carbide managed to escape its obligations for the Bhopal
disaster by deflecting responsibility on to the Indian government.
It constantly downplayed the damage to the people and environment
of Bhopal to limit its liability, demonstrating its utter moral
bankruptcy in the process. Finally, the company simply fled from
India, abandoning the factory and fobbing off the devastated
population with a paltry 'final' settlement of just US$370-533 per
person.
In 2001, Union Carbide shed its name by merging with the
multinational Dow Chemical for US$9.3 billion. This made Dow the
largest chemical company in the world. Yet despite buying Union
Carbide's assets - and its liabilities - Dow has refused to accept
moral responsibility for the actions of Union Carbide in Bhopal, or
even to be accountable for the actions of the company it took
over.
Dow refuses to accept responsibility for the on-going health
problems in Bhopal. Nor has it attempted to deal with the large
stockpiles of dangerous poisons left behind by Union Carbide or the
toxic legacy that is still ruining people's lives. Yet it
nevertheless claims that it has "done what it needs to do to pursue
the correct environment, health and safety programs."
This breathtaking claim clearly reflects the double standards
that many corporations operate daily and demonstrates the gulf
between the lives of the rich and the poor, the powerful and the
defenceless. Former Attorney to the US senate, Curtis Moore,
stated: "A Bhopal type event in the United States… would have been
cleaned up by now, no question about it. If the company didn't want
to clean it up then the government would have done it, and given
the bill for three times the cost of clean-up to the company. Every
corporate executive in the USA knows that those are the sorts of
liability that are attached to releasing chemical poisons."
The ongoing Bhopal disaster shows how important it is that
corporations across all industrial sectors guarantee paramount
safety standards wherever they operate in the world. Greenpeace -
which has been working with Bhopal survivor groups and which opened
an office in New Delhi in 2000 - is campaigning for an
international liability instrument to ensure that both corporations
are held liable for their actions, for compensation to victims of
pollution and for environmental clean-up. We believe that all human
beings around the world have the right to live in a clean, safe and
healthy environment.