The organising committee of the London 2012 Olympic Games is coming under increasing pressure in Britain to explain how Dow Chemicals, the owner of Union Carbide, won a £7-million sponsorship deal for the Games.
As part of the British Government's austerity drive, plans for a multi-million pound wrap for the £500-million main stadium were abandoned last year, but in February the London Organising Committee, LOCOG, announced it was looking for investment from the private sector. A tender followed, and Dow was picked to make the 336 panel, 25-m-high wrap for the 80,000-seat stadium.
“Having the wrap is the icing on the cake,” the Chairman of LOCOG, Mr Sebastian Coe, said at the time.
While Dow won't be able to display its logo from a month before the Games begin, it will while the wrap is being installed, as well as during test events.
The news came several months after Dow signed a 10-year sponsorship deal with the International Olympic Committee.
When announced in August, the LOCOG decision provoked anger both in Britain and India, but now charities are calling for transparency in the decision-making process.
“The Olympic Committee's guidelines on sustainable sourcing are meant to place a high priority on environmental, social and ethical issues when procuring material for the Games,” said Ms Seema Joshi, Head of Business and Human Rights at Amnesty International. “In light of these principles, it is shocking to find out that it has granted such a high profile contract to a firm which has failed to address one of the worst corporate related human rights disasters of the 20th century.”
Amnesty has written to Lord Coe asking LOCOG on exactly how the contract complies with the committee's Sustainable Sourcing Code's priorities.
“We want LOCOG to stand up for the self-declared code in relation to sustainability and take DOW's marketing rights away from them,” according to Mr Tim Edwards, a trustee of the UK-based charity the Bhopal Medical Appeal, who says repeated calls for transparency about the decision making process have been ignored by London 2012.
Mr Keith Vaz, the Labour MP who heads the prominent Home Affairs Committee in the House of Commons, tabled an Early Day Motion earlier this month urging the Government to call on LOCOG to re-consider its decision. “Dow Chemicals should instead direct its funds towards cleaning up the ongoing contamination of the Bhopal site for which it is responsible and which will affect the health of Bhopal residents for generations to come,” said Mr Vaz.
Fourteen MPs have signed up to the petition. Mr Edwards said the number would be far higher but for a fear that criticising the sponsorship deal would amount to criticising the Games, a matter of national pride in the UK. “We certainly wouldn't want it to affect progress of the Games in anyway – we deeply believe in the principles of the Olympic Charter.”
“We asked Dow for, and received, a full briefing on the history of the 1984 Union Carbide Bhopal Gas tragedy and details of ongoing litigation,” said a spokesperson for London 2012. “From this briefing we have confirmed that Dow never owned or operated the facility in Bhopal and remediation is under the control of the courts in India.”