Ships Of Shame: Ethical Reflection Of The Environmental Justice

Since the development of shipbreaking industry during the past 60 years,the world's shipbreaking centers have been constantly moving from developed countries to developing ones.The documentary Ships of Shame-Our Safety,Their Danger presented in 2001 Beijing International Environment Filmfest showed us that on one hand,developed countries shift enterprises which consume large resources and contaminate environment to developing countries.On the other hand,they proposed their own environmental protection propositions but put the environmental damage label to developing countries to escape the economic assistance or compensation to them.Such environmental problems caused by the rich but suffered by the poor are arousing people's attention and reflection.For the environmental justice faced by developing countries,many scholars have expressed their views on their own stand.However,theories based on western environmental ethics are mostly built in the position of developed countries.Western scholars usually confine the concept of environmental community to intestine environmental justice but not globalization.Two important factors that affect environmental justice are discussed in this thesis-poverty and population.Despite the fact that poverty and population are indeed “important killers” to environmental justice,the culprit are western capitalist production mode and the predatory exploitation of global resource.The two problems mentioned above improve that it is the capitalist production mode and the intervention of political factors that lead to environmental degradation.Confronted with the status of environmental justice in developing countries,developed countries should make compensation and stop oppression to them based on the principles of justice,utilitarianism and right.But the fundamental solution to this problem depends on developing countries themselves.They should be committed to the innovation of science and technology,promote the development of social productivity and “Green Economy”,establish and perfect the environment compensation mechanism.In addition,it is quite necessary to strengthen environmental protection consciousness to change the difficult situation of environmental justice problem.