Report from the 'Interrogating Environmental Justice' Conference

Researchers and activists from Australia and South Asia met at a two day conference, on November 10 and 11, hosted by CCS, IOSARN and the Faculty of Arts and Science. Speakers and the audience discussed new ways to understand ‘environmental justice’ in the Global North and the Global South. Taking ‘justice’ as the focus allowed the workshop to look at environmental problems which are often not considered together. Land Rights campaigns and anti-Coal and Coal Seam Gas campaigns in Australia, industrial pollution and dispossession in India, Australia, China and Timor Leste all raise important issues about how justice is seen and how it can be achieved in urgent environment problems.

The workshop was held on the 30th Anniversary of the Bhopal tragedy. In 1984 at Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, a gas leak at the Union Carbide killed 8,000 people immediately. Thousands more have died since then as a direct result from the gas leak. Despite some limited financial contribution to the Indian government, there has been no formal legal proceedings or acceptance of responsibility by the company, and the many people affected are still calling for justice. The communities affected by the Bhopal disaster sent a summary of their current view of the impact of the tragedy to be read at the workshop.

At the conference the documentary 'Bhopali' was screened. Bhopali is a feature documentary about the survivors of the world's worst industrial disaster, the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal, India. Today the suffering continues, prompting victims to fight for justice against Union Carbide, the American corporation responsible.
 
Speakers will be developing their papers for wider circulation.