Restorative Environmental Justice with Transnational Corporations

Abstract

This chapter describes the world’s worst environmental disaster, in Bhopal, India, in 1984, and the effects of toxic waste on victims and survivors. The companies responsible, the Union Carbide Corporation and the Dow Chemical Company, deny responsibility, despite claiming to be eco-friendly and socially responsible. Survivors tried to obtain redress through civil law, criminal law, and public protest and applied in vain to the Indian government. The authors discuss problems and advantages of a restorative approach for the company and survivors: making contact, respecting survivors’ wishes, and modifying restorative principles, for example, by encouraging shareholder pressure. The difficulties could be mitigated by a law of ecocide or various international mechanisms. Companies professing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles could be held to account; a change in terminology might help. Action to enhance people’s lives affects both human rights and the environment, benefiting the reputation and hence the prosperity of the company, the country, and their respective leaders.