A COMMISSIONER of the sustainability watchdog for the 2012 London Olympics resigned on Wednesday (January 25) in protest at the involvement of Dow Chemical, because of its links to the 1984 Bhopal disaster.
Meredith Alexander said she was stepping down from her unpaid position on the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 (CSL), which monitors sustainability at the Olympics and Paralympics.
“I don’t want to be party to a defence of Dow Chemicals, the company responsible for one of the worst corporate human rights violations in my generation,” Alexander said in a statement.
Dow is a major sponsor of both the London Games and the International Olympic Committee, and has stepped in to fund a high-tech “wrap” around the stadium.
“I think the responsible thing to do would be for Dow to withdraw from the wrap contract. Otherwise London 2012 is undermining its aim to be the most sustainable Games ever and showing contempt for the Bhopal victims,” Alexander added.
The London Olympics organisers, LOCOG, said in December that Dow’s name would not be on the wrap during the Games or on five ‘test’ panels either.
India is strongly opposed to the company’s involvement with the Games.
Dow is now the parent company of Union Carbide, whose pesticide plant leaked gas into Bhopal in 1984, killing tens of thousands of people in the world`s worst industrial accident.
The company has said all liabilities for the disaster were resolved after Union Carbide settled with the Indian government in 1989 by paying $470m to the Bhopal victims.
Picture: Sponsor sontrovery: A fabric wrap produced by Dow Chemical is seen in this undated handout computer-generated image of London`s Olympic Stadium
