Professor Peter Atkins (Department of Geography, Durham University)
Environmental risk, health and the law: a case study of groundwater contamination in Bangladesh
The exposure of circa 80 million people to groundwater contaminated with arsenic is now relatively well known. This paper will address the implications of the health risk in the context of debates about expertise and legal geographies. The case of Sutradhar v NERC, which was tested recently in the English High Court and House of Lords, is taken as a starting point for a discussion of 'proximity' between scientific expertise deployed in the name of 'development' and its clientèle in the global south. In legal terms there was an alleged 'tort' - a damage and a liability - resulting from a regime of environmental monitoring that did not pick up the presence of arsenic in groundwater. The House of Lords decided that there was no case to answer but there are broader points about expertise, consultancy and 'duty of care' that remain, particularly for countries such as Bangladesh, where much foreign aid is devoted to understanding and mitigating its many environmental hazards. Although torts have a long history in Anglo-Saxon common law, there is little precedent in international litigation for this style of legal argument.
