Case Study 1 - Bhopal

‘Bhopal’ is a classic case of a Green Crime. The explosion at the Union Carbide pesticide chemical plant at Bhopal in India around midnight on 3 December 1984 has often been described as one of the world's worst ever industrial 'accidents.' Estimates of the numbers of deaths it caused have been hard to calculate: they range from around 3,000 to 6,000 people who may have been killed at the time of the explosion. Whole families were wiped out. Yet a further 200,000 were maimed, brain damaged, deformed and killed due to the 40 tonnes of lethal and noxious gases which were emitted into the atmosphere by the explosion and which have now taken their toll over many years. Blindness, body deformity, birth defects, mental illness, skin discoloration, cataracts, infant deaths, and spontaneous abortions were just some of the effects.

Whilst it is commonly agreed to be one of the world's worst environmental ‘accidents’ (although Chernobyl is a clear ‘rival’ for this claim), is it really fair to call all these deaths and the legacy of continuing health and social problems simply the result of ‘an accident’. To call it a simple accident takes away any culpability. Surely this may serve as a major example of a Green Crime, part of the newly emerging Green Criminology?

For many commentators on Bhopal, the ‘accident’ clearly followed from corporate negligence and mismanagement. The plant used highly toxic chemicals in its production process; and when water somehow mixed with these, the resulting explosion was catastrophic. Of key importance here is the argument that far fewer people would have died or been injured if the plant had not been located so close to the shantytowns of the poor. The ultimate terrible impact of the event on the local natural environment and wildlife - twenty years on - is still not clear. The US owners of the company finally moved out in 1999, leaving behind them a truly devastated area. They left behind a ruined site along with some 5,000 tonnes of waste - much of which had leaked into the soil. There had been little in the way of a serious clean-up operation and lives are still being ruined. Indeed, the company has contested their liability to pay the victims appropriate compensation.

In the text we discuss further the nature of Green Crimes.

For details and images of lives ruined by the Bhopal tragedy, see
http://www.bhopal.org/