0.21 Cultural and aesthetic considerations  (Page 3/5)

An example of exploitation by a foreign corporation occurred in Bhopal, India. Because of the availability of cheap labor and lax environmental laws, it was economically advantageous to locate a Union Carbide chemical plant there. One day in 1984, a cloud of poisonous methyl isocyanate was accidentally released from the plant, killing most of the unprotected people in the adjacent areas. Houses near the plant were mostly of poor families and streets near the plant were populated with many homeless men, women and children. Several thousand people were killed in this disaster. Even after the settlement of lawsuits stemming from the accident, the injured and relatives of the dead received little compensation. Many of the homeless were completely ignored.

In its rush toward development, Bangladesh has established a program of intense use of land, forest, fisheries and water resources. This has led to severe environmental degradation: loss of soil fertility, excessive extraction of groundwater for irrigation, and increased air and water pollution. The lowering of water tables throughout the land, in particular, has led to pollution of ground water by arsenic. As many as 40 million people in Bangladesh may be exposed to toxic levels of arsenic present in many of the nation’s six million private and public wells. The country does not have the economic resources for adequate testing of wells to determine which are poisoned and which are safe. Because of this, millions may die of cancer or “arsenicosis.”

Some idealistic people believe that a definition of a developed country must include factors such as conservation and quality of life and that a truly developed country would not exploit a large fraction of the world's resources. Accordingly, characteristics of such a developed country might include: economic prosperity of all people, regardless of gender or age, sustainable use of resources and more controlled use of technology to ensure a high quality of life for all people. An economically and technologically developed country such as the United States would not qualify as being a truly developed country by these criteria.

Environmental justice

Whenever a community is faced with the potential of an environmentally undesirable facility, such as the placement of a hazardous waste dump in its midst, the usual response from residents is: "Not in my back yard!" Such a response is known as the NIMBY principle. Such reactions are usually reactions to visions of previous environmental irresponsibility: uncontrolled dumping of noxious industrial wastes and rusty steel drums oozing hazardous chemicals into the environment. Such occurrences were all too real in the past and some are still taking place. It is now possible -- and much more common -- to build environmentally sound, state-of-the-art disposal facilities. However, the NIMBY principle usually prevents the construction of such new facilities. Instead, hazardous waste facilities tend to be built upon pre-existing, already contaminated sites, even though the geology of such locations may be less favorable for containment than potential new sites.