Cases / Chemical pollution · India · 1895–1956
Indian indigo area and exports fell sharply, 1895 to 1956
Short record: the main facts, with sources. A full case file has not been prepared.
Nature's voice · report
No measurement of the harm done to me here is on record.
Did nature suffer? Not measured.
Not on record
- The record does not name which of my species, waters, soils or forests were harmed.
India Environment Portal records that Indian indigo cultivation and exports fell sharply between 1895 and 1956. At stake for nature is where the released land went and where the chemical load of synthetic indigo fell, which the sources reviewed do not establish.
What?
India Environment Portal records that Indian indigo cultivation fell from about 700,000 hectares in 1896 to 4,500 hectares in 1956. India Environment Portal
Where?
India (indigo fields) India Environment Portal
When?
1895 to 1956, as recorded by India Environment Portal India Environment Portal
Who?
Gained
None on recordLost
None on recordHarmed
None on recordWhy?
Not stated in the sources reviewed.
How?
Not stated in the sources reviewed.
5 of 6 questions answered from the record · open: who
What happened
The record, in order.
India Environment Portal reports that indigo cultivation in India fell from about 700,000 hectares in 1896 to 4,500 hectares in 1956.
The same source reports that indigo exports fell from 40,000 tonnes in 1895 to 1,000 tonnes in 1914.
In court and with insurers
Every proceeding and every insurer decision on record.
Lawsuits and rulings
No court case on record. No court has ruled on this case.
Insurers
No insurer decision on record.
What we don't know
Undisclosed, unproven, untried: recorded as data.
Nature
- Not measured Harm to nature: The record holds no measurement of harm to nature.
Record
- Insufficient Reported but not verified: synthetic indigo entered the world market in 1897, led by BASF and Hoechst.
- Insufficient Reported but not verified: a plantation owner estimated 4.5 million pounds sterling invested in India's indigo industry by the end of the 19th century.
- Insufficient Reported but not verified: natural indigo competed for about 20 years and collapsed after the First World War, when German knowledge spread.
- Insufficient Reported but not verified: synthetic indigo is petrochemical, uses aniline, cyanide and formaldehyde, and about 75,000 tonnes are produced yearly, more than half by Wonderful Chemical in Inner Mongolia.
- Insufficient Reported but not verified: 76 facilities in the Xintang denim district, 68 of them dyeing, printing and washing, closed for pollution in 2016 to 2018, with local losses above one billion US dollars.
- Insufficient Reported but not verified: another source gives an export peak of 9,366 tonnes in 1895 to 1896 and a fall in cultivated area from 1.4 million acres to 214,000 acres by 1912.
Did the harm stop?
Not stated in the sources reviewed.
Who paid?
Not stated in the sources reviewed.
Sources
Voices on record: — Company or project— Government and regulators— Courts✓ Press and investigations✓ Communities and civil society✓ Researchers
Press and investigations
- Indigofera tinctoriaIndia Environment Portal ·
- Exclusive interview with Shiu Kee Wang, CEO of Wonderful ChemicalEcotextile · September 2017
Communities and civil society
Researchers
- Plantation science: improving natural indigo in colonial India, 1860-1913British Journal for the History of Science · 2007
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Related matters, and cases linked to this one through the same organisations, with the role each played in both.
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