What is Environmental Violence?

          In everyday life it is easy to recognize violence.  We see a fist fight break out, hear about a shooting on the news, or watch footage of combat abroad and automatically identify those situations as examples of violence.  But how do we define violence as it applies to environmental degradation, and not direct human to human physical harm?  Can environmental degradation be used as a weapon, like a firearm can, of violence against a person or group of people--or is violence the wrong term to apply to environmental disasters that cause harm?  I'm arguing that environmental degradation can be defined as violence when it causes direct harm to a person or group of individuals, and I am using three cases as examples of environmental violence in both the developed and developing worlds: the Bhopal disaster in India, Love Canal in upstate New York, and the Three Gorges Dam in China.
          During the "green revolution" in the 1960s and 70s pesticides were hailed as a global solution to increase agricultural production and end world hunger.  The Indian government jumped on this opportunity, creating policies to encourage Western companies to build large pesticide-producing plants in India.  Over a decade later in the 1980s, demand for pesticides had decreased greatly and one of these American-owned pesticide plants in Bhopal, India was set to shut down due to low operations, but without any potential buyers the plant continued to operate through 1984.  The local government in Bhopal knew that the plant failed to meet several industrial and safety regulations, but could not afford to enforce those regulations and instead put the burden of compliance into the factory operators' hands--so it continued to operate unsafely.  Late at night on December 2, 1984 a gas known as methyl isocyanate (MIC) began leaking from the factory as several safety measures failed to work and thousands of Bhopalians slept.  Exposure to this gas resulted in the death of over 8,000 people with more than 200,000 experiencing injuries, birth defects, and other complications related to MIC exposure.  With stricter enforcement and compliance with health and safety regulations, this disaster could have easily been avoided--but because of carelessness and greed thousands of people in Bhopal, India went to sleep on December 2, 1984 never to wake up again.  The eery details of this event, to me, surely can be defined as violence.
          Love Canal was another example of environmental irresponsibility leading to violence against an innocent population, but this one occurred right here in the United States.  At the beginning of the 20th century a man named William T. Love sought to dig a canal connecting the upper and lower Niagara rivers in upstate New York, with the hope of cheap power generation.  By 1910 the canal proved too expensive and digging was halted, leaving only a large ditch.  In 1920 this ditch was turned into a chemical dumpsite, before toxic chemical disposal was strongly regulated.  A few decades later, in 1953, a chemical company who owned the land where the canal resided covered it with earth and sold it for one dollar to the city, who proceeded to built countless homes and schools overtop of Love Canal.  In 1978, after a year of particularly heavy rains, the toxic waste began leaching up from the ground.  In following years disturbingly high levels of birth defects and cancer rates were observed in this area.  As a result of the realization that the toxic chemicals were responsible, many families were compensated and Super Fund was created in the United States.  Regardless, the high incidence of birth defects and cancer that continue to plague past residents of Love Canal and could have easily been avoided clearly define this issue as a violent environmental disaster in the United States.
          While my first two examples were of environmental incidents which directly caused the death, disease, or deformation of individuals; the displacement of large numbers of people can also be considered violent because of the harm it causes.  The Three Gorges Dam in China is the world's largest dam and was built as a potential solution to provide large amounts of energy to growing populations in China.  Since being built in 2006 the dam has created a lot more problems than energy.  It's construction and operations submerged 13 cities, 140 towns, and 1,350 villages, resulting in the displacement of over 1.4 million people--most without adequate compensation.  According to a recent report more than 100,000 more people may be displaced due to landslides and bank collapses caused by the dam.  I would not always consider the displacement of people for projects such as this environmental violence, although I would consider them unethical; but, the large scale displacement of the Three Gorges Dam and the huge number of towns and villages it left submerged, combined with disastrous effects of landslides and bank collapses that are leaving even more people without homes, combine to classify the dam as a violent environmental alteration.
          In class we've debated about the definition of "violence" as it applies to environmental degradation, and if the term can even be applied to it at all.  While I concede that there are several examples of environmental degradation that, while terrible, can not exactly be considered "violent"; I think the three examples discussed in this blog demonstrate that there are instances where environmental degradation has violent results.  The death and harm of innocent individuals, as well as moving millions from their homes without fair compensation, paint as much of a picture of violence for me as seeing war footage on the news or a fight between individuals.