Managing Harm in East Asia: Regulation or Class Action?

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

In parallel with sudden disasters like Fukushima nuclear crisis (2011) or the chemical explosion of Tianjin (2015), toxicants such as asbestos or the chemicals used in the electronics are sources of chronic pollution, what we may be called a chronic disaster, by virtue of their long-term effects on environment and public health. State regulation is supposed to control these toxicants at the national level while the Basel Convention is meant to regulate their transfer at the international level. These regulations however bear many loopholes that litigation can redress or challenge. In Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and more recently in China, the victims of these toxicants and their supporters—lawyers, physicians, experts, labor and environmental activists, journalists, etc.— have developed their own culture of seeking justice through what American lawyers have named “class action” and “toxic torts.” But those legal battles face considerable obstacles to prove causality between exposure to these toxicants and the occurrence—after a long latency—of measurable effects (e.g. contamination of the land, cancers, etc.). To complicate the matter further, the polluting firms spend millions in a sophisticated “production of ignorance.” If class actions bring hope to the victims, what are the effects of these class actions on the long haul and on a larger scale, at an institutional level, in other words, on regulation? If not, what other forms of social mobilization can create more appropriate and efficient regulation? Regulation or litigation: what is the best hope for the control of toxicants in East Asia?

Area of Study

• Northeast Asia

Session Organizer

• Paul Jobin, Paris Diderot University / Academia Sinica

Chair

• Paul Jobin, Paris Diderot University / Academia Sinica

Individual Presentations

• Regulating Toxicity Between Japan and China: E-waste as Problem and Resource - Peter Wynn Kirby, Oxford University; Anna Lora-Wainwright, Oxford University

• Electronics Industry and Occupational Health Hazards in Taiwan: the Power of Mobilization in a Groundbreaking Class Action - Hsin-hsing Chen, Shih Hsin University; Yiping Lin, National Yangming University

• Asbestos in Japan: Social Mobilization and Litigation to Boost Regulation - Tsuyoshi Matsuda, Kobe University; Atsushi Fujiki, National Institute of Technology, Kurume College

• Air Pollution, Risk, and Neoliberal Governmentality in Korea: Exploring Environmental Litigation and Informational Regulation in Contemporary Korea - JooHui Kim, Seoul National University; Doogab Yi, Seoul National University

• The Regulation of Air Pollution Challenged by Citizens in China vs. Class Action in Taiwan - Rodolfo Hernandez, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Paul Jobin, Paris Diderot University / Academia Sinica

Discussant

• Anne Gonon, Doshisha University