Reply #59: Lawrence Summers and the Lesser Developed Countries

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http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03march/march03award.html

The March 2003 Lawrence Summers Memorial Award* goes to Dow Chemical.

In December 2003, Dow announced its intention to sue a group of Bhopal survivors who protested outside of Dow's Indian headquarters in Bombay with the demand that Dow take responsibility for the Bhopal disaster and clean up. Dow has acquired Union Carbide, the company which owned the pesticide factory at the time of the 1984 chemical leak that killed thousands and injured hundreds of thousands.

The Dow suit seeks $10,000 compensation for "loss of work" -- a single Dow employee briefly ventured out of the Mumbai corporate business park to meet the protesters.

"Thousands of us lost their lives, many more have not been able to do our jobs for the last 18 years and 150,000 people in Bhopal are still suffering ill health because of the Union Carbide gas tragedy in 1984," says Satyu, a Bhopal activist and one of the protesters sued by Dow. "Even today people die and children are born with gas related diseases. It is outrageous that Dow is charging us $10,000 and tries to shut us down from seeking justice from them."

Source: Greenpeace, news release, December 23, 2002.

*In a 1991 internal memorandum, then-World Bank economist Lawrence Summers argued for the transfer of waste and dirty industries from industrialized to developing countries. "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)?" wrote Summers, who went on to serve as Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration. "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. ... I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City." Summers later said the memo was meant to be ironic.