by Velma aka Shammah

Created on: April 18, 2008   Last Updated: October 03, 2010

Any company whose operations causes damage to the environment should be liable to every country that has been affected by the company's abuses. Thus, yes, a US company should be legally liable in US courts for environmental consequences because of its operations abroad.

Let's call the US company "X" for the sake of this debate and in order to narrow down this debate and the point I am about to make, because there are a multitude of environmental pollutants affecting us world wide and let us also assume that X is carrying on a business that has waste products that affect the water and the soil in this other country, which I shall call "Y".

Y's main source of income is from the farm products that it produces and exports worldwide. The land in Y is so fertile that the cash crop sales are astronomical and the demand and income generated world wide are such that Y is able to sell its produce to third and fourth world countries, sorely in need of food substances, at a considerably reduced cost. Let's assume that these other countries that are in essence supported by Y's generosity are located on both sides of the continent; a few of them bordering on Y and others the other side of the continent and that in total they number six.

We now have X carrying on its business operations in Y and along with Y there are six other countries somehow related to the business operations of X in Y. This goes unnoticed, until something goes terribly wrong. The citizens of Y start getting ill in numbers and the doctors are having a difficult time pinning down the cause. A year goes by and things are not getting any better, and it seems it has crossed the border into one of the countries subsidized by Y. Eventually people start putting two and two together, and ultimately have lengthy investigation it is discovered that X's waste products from its chemical factory were unsafely buried and dumped in the waters of Y. The soil became polluted and the crops infected with the pollutants. The water carried the chemicals into the neighbouring countries where the rivers flowed.

The US is not affected by any of this as it does not import from Y.

X has made millions of dollars over and above what was expected because of cheap labour and construction costs in Y. The revenue generated by X has made its way back to US soil and ultimately the citizens of the US reap some of the benefits by way of taxes, etc.

Y has a cause of action against X and if it chooses to do so it can rightfully and legally

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