After a decade of efforts, her partnership with Caterpillar continued yielding tremendous results: her Monte Rio plant was now providing three percent of the country’s electric power. Pandora, owner of an industrial conglomerate, was known for her strong character and drive. At 55 years old, the slender mother of two showed no signs of slowing down. For a while, it seemed like she was acquiring companies on a daily basis. She now presided or owned a consulting company, electric plants, chemical distributors and several related ventures.
One of Pandoras’s companies, ‘Global Chemicals’ (disguised name), was the leading supplier of industrial chemicals in the region (and distributed a myriad of potentially hazardous substances) exercising limited pollution controls. The business operated mainly in Haina (Dominican Republic’s major seaport that was also called by many the ‘City of Poison’)[1|#_ftn1]. Global Chemicals served the paint, printing and detergent industries and held over 55% of the country’s market for all of these products (and over 90% for some of them). Although highly profitable, this business operated in a very risky environment.
According to the United Nations, the population of Haina is considered to have the highest level of lead contamination in the world, and its entire population carries indications of lead poisoning.
Haina was named as one of the ten most polluted places on Earth by the US based environmental group the Blacksmith Institute in 2006, and is still listed as one of the 30 worst polluted cities in the world.
Extracted from Wikipedia – 25-Sep-2011
Decades ago, the local government sold industrial lands to families because of lack of habitable regions, electrical distribution problems and because of the fact that industrial pollution levels where very low at the time. Compounding the issue, most of Haina’s inhabitants where also employees of local industries (and were supporting to an extent their own pollution). Regularly, some inhabitants made ends meet by stealing resources from industries on a regular basis (electric power and supplies for example). Global Chemicals lacked the resources or financial incentives to relocate, as did the habitants of the sector. The municipality didn’t have the means (land or money) to move hundreds of thousands of families or enforce tighter environmental controls.
Although all the parties where operating unethically, none of them where navigating illegal grounds: both the inhabitants and Global Chemicals were legal tenants, and Global Chemicals’ wasn’t interested in suing the inhabitants. Furthermore, according to the most current legislation all the plants in the area where environmentally compliant and timely tax payers.
As Pandora arrived to her prestigious offices in the financial district, she browsed a newspaper filled with pressing statements from the government, inhabitants, the media and international NGOs towards Hainan industrialists, and pondered: Which types of actions should I undertake to improve Global Chemical’s relationship with society?
[1|#_ftnref1] Haina - City of Poison (3 minutes): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FezqJd83oFQ , The Dominican Chernobyl - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bajos_de_Haina and Lead poisoning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning