From Colonizing Contract to Decolonizing Covenant: The Case for Ecological Justice in Maquiladoras and a New Covenantal Approach to Christian Environmental Ethics Ilsup Ahn Introduction Today's environmental problems are deeply connected with many structural and global activities of multi‐national companies, corporations, and their overseas branches and sub‐contractors. For example, the case of Bhopal disaster in 1984—which killed more than 8,000 people in Bhopal, India, in just the first few days following the leak of methyl isocyanate gas and other chemicals—was directly related to the U.S.‐based company Union Carbide. The much publicized environmental disaster in Amazon rainforests and rivers in Ecuador and Peru—which resulted in massive environmental pollution and damage between 1964 and 1992—was also directly related to the U.S.‐based energy company Texaco (Texaco was later acquired by Chevron in 2001). Both Union Carbide and Texaco operated their factories and plants legitimately in these countries based on international business agreements which they procured from the governing authorities of the countries. In recent decades, as David Pellow points out in his book, Resisting Global Toxics, increasing volumes of hazardous chemical wastes have been shipped from Europe, the United States, and Japan to nations in Latin America, the Caribbean, South and South‐East Asia, and Africa without any legal violations. The ever expanding economic globalization has legally rendered many poor southern nations vulnerable to various environmental hazards and health insecurities because of their economic situation. As Pellow correctly analyzes, the global waste trade not only reveals global environmental racism and inequality, but also parallels the domestic racist and classist culture and ideology within northern nations such as the United States. Given that a neo‐liberalized global economy and its international commerce and politics have rendered the natural environment increasingly vulnerable to its irreversible level of destruction on a global scale, particularly in the Global South, this study attempts to respond theologically to the ecological destruction caused by many multi‐national companies of the Global North and their overseas branches and local sub‐contractors. In this study, I particularly focus on the important consideration that the widespread destruction of the natural environment in the poor southern nations is legitimately exerted through various bilateral or multi‐lateral contracts and agreements between the contracting parties, which include not only multi‐national companies and corporations based in the First World countries, but also the business owners and the governing authorities of the Third World countries. It is my first argument that any international business contracts or agreements which would compromise or violate environmental justice should not be morally legitimized even if they are legally ratified. Given that the large‐scale environmental destruction is often caused by the unscrupulous activities of multi‐national companies which legitimately run their businesses on the basis of contract and agreement, we should first investigate the origins and scopes of the philosophical justification of contract and agreement. In this study, I attempt to do this by critically engaging the major thinkers of the Western social contract theory, which include Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and other contemporary philosophers such as John Rawls. Through this critical investigation, I develop the main argument of this study that the fundamental paradigm of contract and agreement should be radically transformed from its traditional liberal form to the religiously inspired covenant type. While the liberal paradigm of contract and agreement largely discriminates against the unspoken voices of the environment, resulting in the compromise of environmental justice, the covenant model proactively includes the marginalized voices of the nature, including land, water, and air, thus enhancing environmental justice. In comparing the liberal model of contract and the covenantal agreement, I will also critically compare their pairing ideologies: “mutual benefit” for the liberal contract paradigm and “deep care” for the covenant model. The purpose of this critical investigation and comparison is, then, to advocate environmental justice by claiming that all international business contracts and agreements as well as national and domestic ones should be reoriented to a new covenantal style, departing from the conventional liberal model. In developing this key argument, I will also discuss the practical relevance of this argument by critically analyzing a well‐known...
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Apr 15, 2023
Muhammad Amin Sentosa + 2
Open Access
