Legal Rights – and Wrongs: Internationalising Bhopal

The authors go further, however, in their examination of the Bhopal disaster and raise questions about rights jurisprudence itself, liabilities across boundaries, compensation when long-term consequences are feared, and the scope of responsibility when potentially hazardous substances are involved. One problem considered by the authors in this context is that the origins of rights depend on ownership of property rather than on the needs of individuals, which results in unequal treatment under the law and does not allow for a recognition of the right to dignity, a healthy environment and access to community resources, to take a few examples. Another problem is posed by the fact that the law has hitherto been unable to answer certain basic questions such as: to whom does the earth belong, to whom does the environment belong and how should the people be involved in the decision-making process, when, for example, toxic industries are to be located? Yet another problem is posed by the fact that the disasters of the future are more likely to be transnational than national in character, which in turn requires that national institutions of adjudication will have to be replaced by international institutions based on an international environmental and legal agenda, defined by a binding set of standards and subject to an international regime of obligations towards people.