BOSTON - This week Boston Common Asset Management filed a shareholder resolution with Dow Chemical (parent company of Union Carbide) on behalf of its client, The Brethren Benefit Trust, Inc. and other shareholders, to address the liabilities associated the Bhopal legacy and its survivors. The resolution asks Dow to quantify and analyze the impacts that the Bhopal issue may reasonably pose to the company, its reputation, its finances, and its expansion in Asia and elsewhere.

Sanford Lewis, the attorney representing shareholder proponents of Boston Common Asset Management filed a compliant with the Securities & Exchange Commissions this past August alleging misleading statements by Dow Chemical on its website regarding potential liabilities associated with Bhopal. Lewis said, "Dow's position related to Bhopal has changed. Since we filed the letter with the SEC in August, Dow has dispensed with website language that we had complained about asserting absolutely no liability for Bhopal, while continuing to assert that it has 'no responsibility."See www.dow.com/commitments/debate/d15.html.

"This is not just an issue of humanitarian obligation to the Bhopal survivors, but also of prudent risk management," said Lauren Compere, Chief Administrative Officer of Boston Common Asset Management. "The reality is that Dow Chemical has not done well by its shareholders. There is and will continue to be a very real and tangible impact on shareholder value from the ongoing negative public relations surrounding Bhopal and Dow's lack of accountability and the exposure to litigation that Dow is now facing from both criminal and civil cases here in the U.S. and India, which could result in Dow's assets in India being seized. After 20 years, isn't it time for Union Carbide and Dow to finally face the music?" In 2004, a similar resolution garnered favorable analysis from proxy voting services like IRRC and Institutional Shareholder Services including a For Vote recommendation from ISS's Social Investment and Proxy Voting Services division whose clients are social investors, pension funds and labor unions. Institutional investors who supported the call for a report by Dow on these issues included CalPERS and NYCERS. Boston Common expects similar support from these types of investors in 2005.

At midnight on December 2, 1984 an estimated 40 tons of lethal gases leaked from Union Carbide's pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, immediately killing 8,000 people and poisoning thousands of others. Today, at least 150,000 people, including children born to parents who survived the disaster, are suffering from exposure-related health effects such as cancer, neurological damage, chaotic menstrual cycles and mental illness. Over 20,000 people are forced to drink water laced with unsafe levels of mercury, carbon tetrachloride and other persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals.

Many events worldwide are taking place to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the disaster. Other events include the release of a new Amnesty International report exposing Dow Chemical, teach-ins and vigils at over 60 colleges worldwide and a new book by investigative reporter Jack Doyle, entitled Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century.

Investors and human rights, labor and environmental health advocates gathered at Wainwright Bank downtown yesterday, where the resolution was introduced. Ashim Roy from the Indian Trade Union Initiative, spoke about Bhopal as an example of untested technologies being transferred to developing countries and having deadly effects. Bhopal is an early example who what can happen when in the rush to globalize, multinational corporations roll over the basic human rights and social obligations they would have to meet in their home country. Amnesty International members also spoke about the human rights report released on Dow and Bhopal on Nov. 29th, the first Amnesty report to highlight a corporate rather than solely governmental human right abuse.

The group watched short documentary, Twenty Years Without Justice: The Bhopal Chemical Disaster; depicting the injustices the people of Bhopal have endured in the decades since the disaster, and the current efforts to bring Union Carbide and its parent company, Dow Chemical, to justice. View the video at responsibility.See http://bhopal.strategicvideo.net. There will also be screenings of another new film, Bhopal - The Search for Justice, at MIT on Dec 4th at 2pm and at Tufts on Dec 6th at 7pm. More details on this film at responsibility.See http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/. For event details e-mail secular@mit.edu.

The 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal known as the Hiroshima of the Chemical Industry has left an estimated 150,000 people chronically ill, 50,000 of whom are too sick to earn a living. The impact on survivors health continues to exceed the most pessimistic predictions. The compensation paid by Union Carbide is less than nine U.S. cents a day per victim a pathetically inadequate amount, given the economic and health needs of survivors, says Tim Edwards of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal. Dow Chemical assumed liability for the Bhopal plant when it acquired Union Carbide in 2001.

Union Carbide's $470 million compensation package covered only civil awards for the half million people exposed, leaving unresolved the potential damages for criminal charges and for environmental contamination unrelated to the disaster. Accused of culpable homicide, Union Carbide is officially a fugitive from justice, defying orders of the US and Indian courts to face trial in India, said Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action. After leaving its factory a global toxic hotspot,so poisoning Bhopal a second time, Carbide also faces a case in the US courts. The growing movement for corporate accountability will never let this issue rest.

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Boston Common Asset Management

Boston Common Asset Management

Boston Common Asset Management is an employee-owned investment firm dedicated to the pursuit of financial return and social change. We offer social investors an unrivaled range of customized social investment products. These include U.S. core- or value-oriented equity and balanced accounts, as well as international and small cap options. Our efforts on the social dimension include thorough independent research, tenacious shareholder advocacy, and community development investing.

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