Stories on Chemical Catastrophes and Other Environmental Disasters - Literature review Example

Section/# Table of Contents Introduction Chemical Catastrophe: From Bhopal to BP Texas The Bhopal disaster ‘A Crisis as Real as Rain’ ‘Love Canal Tragedy’ Indigenous Movements and the Risks of Counter-globalization: Tracking the campaign Against Papua New Guineas OK Tedi Mine Learning From Failures: A Case Study of the Deepwater Horizon Large-Scale Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Can Local Disturbance Affect Distant Ecosystems Dioxin Exposure and Cancer Risk in the Seveso ‘Deadly Discharge’ Corruption and Environmental Degradation in Nigeria and Its Niger Delta Conclusion Reference List Introduction: One of the primary means by which the face of business has changed over the recent past has of course been the increasing globalization that has taken place throughout nearly every sector and layer of the international business. In such a way and in such a form, it has been common for a litany of multinational firms to become heavily diversified and invested within numerous regions the world over. This has meant that the ownership and diversity of a host of formerly domestic firms have international linkages and ownership that spreads a web of inter-related and self dependent business mechanisms the world over. To understand the ways in which these firms have diversified and sought influence throughout the world is of course a historical international business task that have provided such a high level of success for so many operations around the glove. However, these successes have not been without their costs. Although the fields of environmental impact and international business history are not often discussed in conjunction with one another, they are in fact intimately related. Accordingly, this analysis will consider the case of several environmental disasters that took place under the watch of firms participating in one form or other of international business. As a means of better understanding how these disasters unfolded, the degree to which corporate/international complicity was taking place with regards to known safety hazards which were engaged upon, actions that were taken as a result, level of civic and ethic engagement with such topics, and the ways in which international business ethics have been forced to be changed as a result are all topics which the proceeding articles will consider. As a means of tabulating and chronicling such a historical overview of international business misdeeds with respect to environmental issues, the reader is able to better understand and appreciate the key changes that each of these instances has helped to affect as well as to seek out new and emergent ways in which international firms operating outside of their domestic economy can be encouraged to participate in both an ethically and environmentally responsible manner with regards to the resources that they are oftentimes so hungry to exploit. Regardless of the changing nature of business or even the level of globalization that is currently experienced within the world model of international business, the fact remains that the firms that are in existence today ear moral and ethical responsibility for the actions that they take and the ways in which they seek to utilize the key resources that power industry and human progress and development the world over. As such, the proceeding analysis helps to point to many of the mistakes of the past as well as more than a few that continue to create issues into the present time. In this way, the reader can access the interconnected nature of the world’s ecosystems in direct connection to the means by which international business relies on the complex web of interdependencies itself. These two forces are and have been at odds since the dawn of human industry and progress. As a means of better integrating the two and seeking to point to the key issues and ethical breakdowns that have contributed to some of the pasts most horrendous international business exploitations of the environment, the reader is made aware of a very obvious trend that has the potential of being regulated and corrected as a higher and higher degree of international oversight helps to govern the resources that everyone shares. Chemical Catastrophe: From Bhopal to BP Texas City The first article which has been chosen for such a review relates to the Bhopal disaster of 1984. Bhopal has collectively been referred to, and rightly so, as the solitary worst industrial accident in the history of the world. Before delving into a more nuanced understanding of the events that led to this situation, one should understand that the toll on life and health within the region immediately surrounding Bhopal has yet to be fully determined due to the fact that the carcinogenic nature of the chemicals released continues to have a heavy impact on the health and mortality of those individuals that were originally exposed to the toxins. The article in question entitled, “The Bhopal Disaster”, explains the degree to which Union Carbide, a United States owned chemical production specialist that operated the Bhopal facility within India was ultimately responsible for the breakdown in safety protocols that saw the chemical spill that took place (Mac Sheoin 2010, p. 22). However, for purposes of the article and for purposes of this analysis, the fact of the matter remains that establishing ultimate blame for such an incident is of secondary importance due to the fact that since the Bhopal chemical plant was operating under the direct auspices of and serving as a branch of Union Carbide in India it was therefore ultimately responsible for any and all safety protocols that may or may not have been followed at the plant. As it turns out, and as the article details, the fact of the matter was that many of the safety mechanisms that helped to regulate the chemical mixtures, cooling apparatus, and the means by which the chemical reactants and reagents were ultimately stored were shut down as a means to save money on the electricity that they necessarily consumed. Though it is not the purpose of the article in question or this reaction and analysis to lay legal responsibility, it should be noted that the way in which Union Carbide chose to run the Bhopal plant was prone to such a disaster as a result of the hands off approach and complete disregard for standardization of safety protocols of any variety. The Bhopal Disaster The second article discusses the ultimate culpability of the Bhopal disaster as a function of who knew what, when, and to what extent with regards to the ignored safety protocols and apparatus that was intended to govern the production process. As a result of the fact that much of the safety apparatus was switched off as a means to save money, many of the workers at the plant that were tasked with production of the end product were unfamiliar with the ways in which the safety componentry worked and played a role in the production process. As the article states, such an eventuality was in fact something of a systemic problem that exhibited itself for quite a long period of time at the Bhopal plant and had become standard operating procedure for producing the most yield with the least expenses as possible (Block et al 2012, p. 6). The article goes on to consider this incident and the steps that led to it as some of the most blatant examples of corporate/international business greed and ethical lapses that ultimately contributed to the deaths of over 10,000 people (Sheoin 2012, p. 23). The article goes on to explain a bit more detail with regards to the human toll of the accident and attempts to explain why the death figures associated with Bhopal disaster all vary so widely. This is due to the fact that initial release of the poison gas killed thousands within hours. Subsequently, the exposure to the gas killed many thousands more in the intervening weeks, months, and years since the release. A preponderantly high number of cancer related deaths and illnesses related to respiratory disease has also continued to plague the region in recent years. The particular article details how, to the credit of Union Carbide, the firm was able to claim a high level of ignorance with regards to how the safety protocols were enacted and the level to which individuals within the plant were trained to manage and operate the machinery (Zavestoski 2009, p. 391). This was of course due in no small part to the fact that the firm was primarily interested in producing the very cheapest product possible within the plant with little to no concern for the environmental, safety, or ethical implications that such a path of action would necessarily portend. In this way, these two articles that relate to the Bhopal disaster help to paint a vivid image of what can come of unconstrained greed with relation to a firms producing product at the expense of safety protocols and with little regard for the lives or the environment of the host nation. Such illustrates a primary problem with the means by which international businesses oftentimes exploit the lives and environment of those regions in which they do business within. A Crisis as Real as Rain In the current era there is a great deal of emphasis on the means by which firms responsibly use and re-use the resources that they require. Sadly, as is oftentimes the false, this does not take place to the fullest extent that is advertised to the consumer. Oftentimes, this level of green awareness serves as little more than a marketing ploy to engage the consumer with what some may term a “warm and fuzzy” concerning the supposed responsible nature with which the firm treats the environment. In much the same way, a great deal of emphasis has recently been placed on the dangers of global climate change and the extent to which the world is able to absorb the ever higher amounts of human emitted CO2 that is collecting in the Earth’s atmosphere. To this end, the article entitled “A Crisis as Real as Rain” discusses the ramifications of the destruction to the Amazon rainforest which is being perpetrated under the purview of one of the world’s largest multinational agro-producers in the world – Cargiff (Morrow 2002, p. 76). The article denotes the means by which thousands of hectares of land in the central Amazon basin have been cleared as a means of promoting the cultivation of large tracts of soya. Moreover, the article spends a great deal of time discussing the environmental costs that such an approach has affected upon the native environment. Where 300 species of trees and a seemingly uncountable number of other plant and insect life used to exist, the destruction of the rainforest at the behest of companies such as Cargiff represents what can only be seen as an exceptionally shortsighted and one-dimensional approach to resource use and allocation (Arai et al 2011, p. 1944). Naturally, although the article in question paints a less than favorable view of the means by which Cargiff operates, in fairness, it is merely indicative of the means that many multinational operations seek profits. As was noticed in analyzing this particular article and the nuances of the case surrounding it, the reader quickly understands that a common theme within the case, as was the case with the Bhopal disaster (and as will be the case in several of the subsequent cases which will be listed), was that the firm utilizes the existence of a layer of middle men in order to distance themselves from the damage that is being perpetrated at their ultimate behest. Love Canal Tragedy So that the reader will not gain the impression that such instances of environmental damage and disregard for the health and safety of others only exists in the developing world, the case of Hooker Chemical in the state of New York is considered in the following article entitled: “Love Canal Tragedy”. In this article, the authors detail the means by which Hooker Chemical, a chemical production firm that supplied a variety of industrial grade chemicals to customers throughout the US and Canada knowing buried tons of chemical waste and byproducts on the land that they occupied on the peninsula between Lake Ontario and Lake Eerie (Phillips et al 2007, p. 317). Although the industry itself was complicit in the activity of illegally burying the toxic material in ways that permanently damaged the surrounding environment, the Niagara Falls School District actively sought to purchase the land from the company as a means to build a much desired new school expansions. The article goes on to list the ways in which Hooker Chemical initially baulked at the offer and sought to convince the local officials of the dangers that the site engendered; however, the firm eventually caved to the pressure and sold the land to the local community with the caveat that it was highly toxic and exceedingly unsafe to build any structures or house any individuals within the region. Although the firm was small by the standards of the analysis that has thus far been conducted, it is yet another example of how an international firm has been willing and able to cut corners in order to avoid the fees associated with proper chemical disposal as stipulated by law (Hoffman 1995, p. 4). In short the article presents the alternate view of a firm that equally engaged in environmental destruction as the ones that have thus far been enumerated upon but did so within the context of performing such actions within a developed nation with rigid laws in place regarding disposal of toxic waste. Indigenous Movements and the Risks of Counter-globalization: Tracking the campaign Against Papua New Guineas OK Tedi Mine This particular article details the means by which an Australian multinational mining firm knowingly and actively contaminated drinking water supplies by dumping toxic and untreated mining runoff into the local Ok Tedi River. The toxic runoff accounted for over 90 million tons per year; a staggering figure when analyzed against the backdrop of the legally stipulated amounts of runoff (nontoxic) that New Guinean law permitted. The multinational firm, Australian owned BHP, initially denied that anything within the runoff was toxic and that it was merely a slurry of “muddy water” (Kirsch 2007, p. 309). However, the truth was soon determined as the river was analyzed and found to contain extremely high levels of hazardous chemicals. As the article details, the waste water runoff affected nearly a 500 square miles of the river, 120 villages that depended upon the water resources that the mine polluted, and 50,000 local residents. What differentiates this particular environmental disaster from the ones that have previously been listed is that no recourse was ever put in place to rectify the problem done by the mining operation. Instead, the problem was merely ignored and continues to this day (Jorgensen 2006, p. 226). The article details that it will likely take up to 300 years for the full clean up of the waste that has been dumped into the river system to wash out; providing that no other waste is dumped in from the current time until then. Learning From Failures: A Case Study of the Deepwater Horizon Naturally, one would be remiss discussing multinational/international business and its role in environmental issues without discussing what was the worst oil spill in recorded history; BP’s Deepwater Horizon. This event in and of itself needs little introduction; however, a litany of articles have been written on the subject detailing everything from the effect to the livelihood of those individuals in the surrounding areas that depended upon the sea’s bounty to provide for themselves and their families to ultimate responsibility for the explosion that ruptured the well head in the first place (Safford 2012, p. 35). For purposes of this analysis, the article entitled, “Learning from Failures: A Case Study on Deepwater Horizon” has been used. This particular article details the lapses in protocol and safety violations that all but assured an incident would eventually occur on the rig (Rose 2012, p. 6). Although ultimate blame lies squarely on the shoulders of British Petroleum as it is the firm responsible for ensuring that all safety protocols have been followed, a fair level of blame also was on the rig operators who sought to cut corners and had no regards for the safety officer’s recommendations or the warnings associated with deviating from standard protocol when drilling and/or operating a new well head (Brazier 2012, p. 36). Large-Scale Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Can Local Disturbance Affect Distant Ecosystems Rather than focusing on culpability, this particular article, entitled “Large Scale Impacts of Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Can Local Disturbance Affect Distant Ecosystems” discusses the overall environmental affects that the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster has effected on the long-term health and survival of endemic plant and animal species within the Gulf of Mexico and affected estuaries of the Louisiana coastal region (Hayes 2012, p. 147). The article makes it clear that although the oil slicks that jump to mind when one remembers those fateful months of the summer of 2010 have long since faded from the ocean’s surface, the fact remains that the damage to plant and other ocean life may take decades to fully measure (Henkel et al 2012, p. 679). In this way, the Deepwater Horizon Disaster ranks as one of the most damaging to the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico, Mississippi river delta, and the greatest oil disaster in human history (Haycox 2012, p. 221). Dioxin Exposure and Cancer Risk in the Seveso The eighth article which has been chosen for inclusion, entitled “Dioxin Exposure at Seveso”, in this list of multinational/international firms whose negligence has caused horrendous effects to both human life and the environment is that of the Seveso dioxin spill. Like has been the case with many of the other examples listed, the firm ICMESA was a subsidiary of a much larger Swiss parent company known as Givadaun. Givadaun operated the Seveso facility as a means to supply the parent company with a ready supply of chemicals and synthesized reactants to use in their multi-million dollar cosmetic and perfume lines (Balcu et al 2010, p. 131). Additionally, proper procedure was not followed as employees strove to rapidly shut down production lines due to existing Italian law at that time that demanded that all factories shutter over the weekend (Warner et al 2011, p. 1701). As one might expect, in their haste to shutter the production, unexpected levels of dioxin pressure and buildup occurred within the equipment and eventually created an explosion that leaked a highly toxic gas cloud of dioxin into the outlying town of Seveso. As was the case with the Bhopal disaster, Cargiff operations in the Amazon rainforest, and to a small degree the Deepwater Horizon spill, Givadaun was able to maintain a degree of distance from their subsidiary; regardless of the fact that the firm was ultimately culpable for the lack of training or safety enforcement that precipitated the spill, Givadaun was able to escape with a minimal fine with relation to the accident. Deadly Discharge Unlike the other incidents that have herein been detailed, the Sandoz spill took place not at a mining operation, an oil well, or heavy industry of any type but rather a pharmaceutical plant. The article entitled “Deadly Discharge” discusses the events leading up to the fire that released a large amount of toxic substances used in pharmaceutical production both into the local water supply as well as into the air. Rather than representing a willing and complicit decision to destroy the environment for personal or company gain, the greatest drawback that the Sandoz spill helped to point to was the general lack of any training or preparation for dealing with a chemical spill of such a magnitude; both by the requisite authorities as well as the plant staff and safety officers (Purvis 2000, p. 26). The article goes on to address the fact that even due to the fact that many toxic substances were stored within the warehouse that supplied the pharmaceutical manufacturer, no allowances had been made for remediating spills or prepetition for any type of instance which would cause the simple containment vessels that these substances were stored in to fail (Sandoz 2012, p. 8). Corruption and Environmental Degradation in Nigeria and Its Niger Delta Perhaps most depressing of any of the environmental issues that currently faces the planet is with regards to what firms such as Shell and others are affecting within the Niger delta. The article entitled “Corruption and Environmental Degradation in Nigeria and its Niger Delta” helps to shed light on the ways in which this ongoing environmental catastrophe is unfolding (Ewharieme 2011, p. 450). Although there are few statistics to shed light on the exact humanitarian toll that the environmental destruction to what was otherwise a pristine environment truly is, the fact remains that few if any of the other environmental or ethical issues that have thus far been discussed have proceeded for such a very long period of time as the systematic poisoning that is occurring within the Niger delta where every day raw oil and slurries of oil mixtures are poured directly into the rivers and surrounding areas with little to no regard as to what environmental affect such an action will have for the future (Stevens 2011, p. 399). This is the worst of all corporate/international disasters due to the fact that it has no determinate end in sight. Moreover, and equally depressing, this situation shows the extremes of behavior that certain international/multinational firms will go to when environmental, civic, social, moral, and ethical constraints are not enforced by any oversight body or by the government of the host nation (Ifedi et al 2011, p. 79). The article makes mention of the fact that although this action is not the norm for a multinational firm, it is however emblematic of what is taking place and unless a change of pace is realized, the damage will likely be irreversible; if it is not already. Conclusion: Rather than being a diatribe against international business and the existence of multinational firms throughout the world, this analysis and article analysis is meant to serve as representation of some of the major wrongs that have and continue to exist within the realm of international business. As such, it should not be taken as a type of laundry list to be indicative of the fact that each and every firm that engages in international business or has multinational branches around the globe is somehow complicit in the destruction of the native environment or severe risk to the lives of those individuals within the firm or the community affected. Rather, the analysis has been intended to note the level to which ethical and environmental concerns continue to plague even the most well respected and seemingly socially responsible firms. References Arai, E, Shimabukuro, Y, Pereira, G, & Vijaykumar, N 2011, A Multi-Resolution Multi-Temporal Technique for Detecting and Mapping Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest, Remote Sensing, 3, 9, pp. 1943-1956, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 17 January 2013. 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