Undergraduate Thesis: Transnational Alliances Against Formosa Plastics Group (FPG)

About Project

An empire of petrochemical corporations is expanding to feed an endless appetite for plastic products. Where petrochemical plants take root, severe ecological harm often befalls nearby (usually low-income and/or BIPOC) communities, spelling disaster for their health and livelihoods. As petrochemical conglomerates seamlessly traverse international borders, the damage they inflict manifests on a global scale.

Formosa Plastics Group (FPG), one of the world’s largest petrochemical corporations, is a hallmark of irresponsible industry. Originating from Taiwan, FPG has an egregious reputation for pollution, illegal waste dumping, and workplace accidents. Constant incidents of environmental harm and safety infractions have provoked opposition movements from communities in Louisiana, Texas, Taiwan, and Vietnam. FPG’s sprawling presence across the globe proves a unique challenge to activists tackling the corporation. Can environmental justice organizers negotiate borders as easily as the petrochemical corporations they seek to stop?

My thesis research will explore transnational environmental justice theory and practice as they apply to activists in Taiwan and the United States opposing FPG. Through in-depth interviews, archival research, and some participant-observation, I will investigate the current relationship between domestic and overseas organizers. Through this study, I want to explore: 1) how advocates opposing FPG understand overseas advocates in relation to themselves, 2) what efforts to communicate or collaborate with overseas communities exist, and 3) what logistical or cultural barriers may limit the formation of international activist alliances. From this study, we can better understand how to hold petrochemical corporations to a global standard of environmental equity by sharing knowledge and tactics across organizations.

Researchers

Zoe Friese

Institution

Tulane University

Funding Agency

Newcomb Institute

Start and End Date

04/01/2023 to 05/01/2024

Featured Essays

Photo Essay: Formosa Plastics Museum, Taoyuan

View essay

FPG Museum Entrance

[Welcome to this virtual tour of the Formosa Plastics Group Museum! We, your tour guides, are a collection of academics and researchers studying Formosa Plastics Group (FPG), an international petrochemical corporation headquartered in Taiwan. As we share images and interpretations of museum exhibits with you, we encourage the audience to consider: How does FPG as a company view itself? How does FPG hope others view the company?]

FPG Museum Road Sign

The Formosa Plastics Group Museum is located on the grounds of Chang Gung Formosa Plastics University, near Taipei. Chang Gung University grew out of a hospital set up by [FPG] in 1976 “to make a meaningful contribution to Taiwan’s society.” Today, the university uses “the successful management model of Formosa Plastics Corporation and its resources” to build students’ management knowledge (https://www.cgu.edu.tw/p/404-1000-17343.php?Lang=en).

FPG Museum Overview Flyer I

[edit the image to be both the front & back of the flyer]

The Formosa Plastics Museum has [seven total] floors of exhibits celebrating the founder and spirit of the Formosa Plastics Group--complete with dioramas, wax figures, and a miniature replica of Formosa’s Sixth Naphtha Cracking Plant. Other highlights include the Earth Conservation Theatre on the fifth floor [and a simulated forest experience in the basement level, alongside a souvenir shop. Exploring the entirety of the museum takes 4 to 5 hours!] The sixth floor conveys how Formosa has given back to society through investment in education, hospitals, and cultural heritage projects. [I'm thinking save this last sentence for later in the essay]

FPG Museum Logo

[When entering the museum, guests are greeted by this large FPG logo engraving, complete with the company's Chinese name, "台塑企業."

Formosa Plastics Group is a massive conglomerate of over 100 subsidiary companies, which produce a vast array of industrial and chemical products. FPG highlights some of its most prominent subsidiary companies in eleven small icons included in the logo, including Formosa Plastics Corporation, Nan Ya Plastics, Formosa Petrochemical Corporation, and Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation.]

Portrait of Founder Wang

The Formosa Plastics Museum's second floor features the details of Founder Wang Yang-ching's (王永慶) upbringing and rise to prominence. This Western-style portrait, mounted in a grandiose gold frame, depicts Founder Wang sitting in front of a crowd of employees dressed in white. The mass is running forward, presumably a reference to the exercise events that FPG hosted, but also suggesting Founder Wang as an inspiration moving thousands forward towards progress. The golden letters above his head, 勤勞樸實, are a corporate slogan utilized consistently throughout the museum. The four characters mean diligence, hard work, frugality, and sincerity--values that Founder Wang claims FPG strives to accomplish.

FPG's Beginnings: Ox-drawn Cart of PVC Resin

This replica depicts the original ox-drawn cart that Formosa Plastics (originally known as Fumao Plastics 福懋塑膠) used in the 1950s to transport PVC resin. Emphasizing their humble beginnings, Formosa Plastics began as a small company producing 4 tons of PVC resin daily, surviving Taiwan's depression and growing over the decades into a massive corporation.

Besides the display is the phrase "篳路藍縷開展石化王國," meaning "enduring hard beginnings to develop a petrochemical kingdom." The Chinese idiom utilized to describe hard beginnings invokes an image of a pioneer driving a cart in ragged clothes. This language suggests that Formosa Plastics is an innovating, resourceful company that deserves its current success. Using its scrappy origins, the company justifies its current behavior as rooted in humility.

Theory of the Starving Goose

[I think we should replace this image with one of young Founder Wang's wax figure--would look a little more interesting and emphasize the narcissism of it all. I have a photo we can use!]

[A significant portion of the museum--virtually all of the second floor--describes the upbringing and philosophical approach of the company's founder. Growing up in a poor rural community, Founder Wang is said to have created this vastly wealthy company through wit and resourcefulness.

An exhibit of his early life describes the "Theory of the Starving Goose," which references Wang's time raising geese in his village. He could not afford enough feed to keep his geese well-nourished, so to prevent their starvation, Wang supplemented the goose feed with leftover vegetable leaves from neighbors. His spendthrift approach allowed the geese to survive and his livelihood to continue.]

Dark wall shows world map, with white dots and city names at self proclaimed facility sites.

FPG's Global Reach: Corporate Maps

[Despite its humble origins, Formosa Plastics Group is the fourth largest petrochemical company in the world today, worth over $100 billion in annual market capitalization. FPG began expanding facility operations across the globe in the 1990s, especially in China, the United States, and Southeast Asia. In this wall-sized map of world operations, FPG depicts facilities in over 16 U.S. states.

It is noteworthy that this map depicts Taiwan, the company's home country, as significantly larger than on its actual geographic size. By making the island the same size as Taiwan and the United States, could FPG be suggesting that it is growing the geopolitical power of Taiwan through economic expansion?]

FPG Museum Children's Comic

FPG Museum Environmental Impact

Wang Yung-ching Timeline

FPG Museum Rice Installation

Petrochemical Display: Indigenous Traditional Weaving Statue

-absurdity of an indigenous person weaving this, tone-deaf

-a reference to social welfare programming

Formosa Plastics & Indigenous Communities

6th Naphtha Cracker Complex Glass Floor Diorama

Making Green Chips

Corporate Social Responsibility Booklet

FPG Museum Overview Flyer II

Kauri wood exhibit, Formosa Plastics Museum

Upon entering the Formosa Plastics Group Museum in Taoyuan, Taiwan, the first thing that visitors see is a large piece of wood, kept under a dome of glass. The label at the bottom reads:

This magnificent piece of New Zealand Kauri burl had been buried in the ground for more than fifty thousand years before being unearthed. The timber is a rare hard resin-filled solid wood. This beautifully-shaped burl weighs 8.5 tons, well over the the 6 ton piece held by the British Museum in London, making it unique in the world. In 2002, Chairman Wang Yung-ching came across the Kauri burl in Kaohsiung and was drawn to its strength so much that he decided to make this Kauri burl the centerpiece of his collection. This remarkable piece of wood on display here at the entrance to the museum symbolizes the vitality of the Formosa Plastics Group capable of immeasurable possibilities. and longevity.

I later learned that a burl is considered a tree's natural response to "some form of stress such as an injury or a viral or fungal infection" (Wikipedia). I also looked up the Mandarin translation for burl, which is 瘤 (liú). This term can mean hump, knurl, lump, nubble, or tumor. The latter invokes environmental and health impacts, such as high cancer rates in petrochemical fenceline communities. However, these issues are not addressed in the museum. Instead, the piece of wood is paired with an all-plastic recreation of a New Zealand rainforest in the museum's B1 gift shop. This recreation includes chirping bird sound effects, leaving visitors with a greenwashed first and last impression.

However, one way to capture the ambivalent meaning of the object at the center of the museum is through Kim Fortun's (2019) reflection on "toxic vitalism," a term that describes "the way systems can take on a life of their own, often beyond what experts planned or expected.

Gray and white, small circular structure made from tiny, Lego-like pieces depicting Formosa Plastics Group Museum.

Mini Toy Building Set of Formosa Plastics Group Museum

The museum has an array of FPG-made products in a souvenir shop on the basement level. Items on display ranged from beauty products and toiletries to dried snacks, tea, bleach, and commemorative jewelry. This Lego-like plastic building set, which creates a FPG Museum replica, was purchased in the museum.

Their souvenir shop leaves critical visitors with a few takeaways. First, it displays the uncanny diversity of goods that FPG and its subsidiaries create--the company's influence ranges far beyond what the public imagines petrochemical production to be. Secondly, for visitors familiar with FPG's extensive legal and human rights violations, the shop feels tone-deaf to the point of absurdity.

Representative Zoe Lofgren at podium in IMFA Congressional Briefing

Congressional Briefing by International Monitor Formosa Alliance, October 2023

Yunlin County, Taiwan

Cancer Alley, Louisiana

View essay

Bhopal Gas Disaster 1984

Narration by Kim Fortun

"I started my research -- long ago -- at the site of the 1984 Union Carbide chemical plant disaster in Bhopal, India, which killed thousands in the immediate aftermath and left continuing, deadly pollution in the community’s water supply. Since my research in India in the early 1990s, when the Bhopal case was being heard by Indian courts, I have followed similar hazards in the United States, in the state of West Virginia, where the sister plant of Union Carbide’s Bhopal plant was located, near where I grew up around Houston Texas, and in the River Parishes of southern Louisiana -- a region environmental activists have called Cancer Alley, and, more recently -- Death Alley.

In the early 1990s, as globalization intensified, there was momentum to connect communities around the United States and the world dealing with similar hazards so that they could share knowledge and work together for environmental protection"

Bhopal on the Bayou Highway Photograph

"One result of that activism was this sign on Highway 10 headed toward the River Parishes, warning of the potential for “Bhopal on the Bayou.” Concern about this has motivated my research and teaching throughout my career. It is why I teach the class titled “Environmental Injustice” at University of California, Irvine and why I am part of the collaboration behind this tour. As we’ll share, there is a renewed need today to connect polluted communities around the world because of a surge of plans to to build additional plants in already polluted communities. Communities in Southern Louisiana (and elsewhere) are fighting back."

How the Virus Won

"In April 2020, this region was in the news because it had the highest COVID mortality rate in the country (68.7 per 100,000 people, Laughland and Zanolli 2020). The region was in the news even before COVID-19, however, for having the highest cancer rates in the country, likely due to toxic industrial emissions from the over 150 nearby petrochemical facilities (James et al 2012). Many of the chemical plants are on the grounds of former sugar plantations. Many descendents of people enslaved on the plantations still live nearby; the population is 32 % African American (Kasakove 2020). The health and wealth indicators in the region are soberingly poor. Projections for the future are also sobering…, with predictions of rising heat, increased coastal flooding and extreme weather events.

What connects these data points? This is our focus in this tour.

The Cancer Alley case powerfully illustrates historically produced disadvantage and vulnerability. It also provides powerful examples of Black resistance and resourcefulness."

EiJ Key Concepts Slide

"The Cancer Alley case exposes many forms of racism -- institutional, structural, interpersonal and systemic -- and many forms of injustice -- health, reproductive, economic, procedural, media and others -- all combining to produce staggering environmental injustice and what scholars and activists have called a “sacrifice zone.”

The Cancer Alley case also points to underlying knowledge problems: to the ways it is often difficult to characterize and act on the problems people face because of inadequate data, methods, analytics tools and research. This produces what we term “data divergence” -- different ways of seeing things, with some people recognizing problems and others discounting them. Often, what people see -- and don’t see -- is shaped by economic interests and deeply rooted, often unspoken racism and sexism."

Industrial Facilities along the Mississippi

"Community members, working with activists and researchers, are pushing back -- protesting plans to bring new chemical plants to the area, for example. One recent success has been a stay on further development of a new Formosa Plastics plant because activists were able to demonstrate that graves found on the plant grounds are likely those of people enslaved on the plantation once located there. Markers of death and dispossession are thus becoming more visible and actionable. There are openings for change and we need to move through them.'

This is our purpose of the tour: to tell the story of Louisiana’s River Parishes in a way that sets the stage for change. The project design has many moving parts and players to help with this. The project is designed to connect university researchers -- including student researchers -- to communities struggling to address environmental injustice. Research on the Cancer Alley case was done by researchers at the University of California Irvine, in partnership with environmental activists and cultural leaders in Louisiana’s River Parishes -- using a case study framework that allows us to compare and connect the Louisiana case to other cases of environmental injustice around the world. Our environmental injustice case study framework is also used by UCI student researchers studying environmental injustice in California communities, for example, and by student researchers at University of Mexico Tech. At UCI, we focused on explosive, slow pollution and climate change disaster in California communities. At University of Mexico Tech, student research focuses on radiation hazards, primarily from uranium mining. The environmental injustice case study framework thus also allows us to connect many different types of environmental hazards, supporting concerted action to address them. Perhaps most important is the way a shared case study framework allows us to connect people in different places, with different experiences and skills, who can work together to deepen understanding of why environmental injustice happens and what a “just translation” will entail. “Just transition” is the name given to a still not-yet-figured-out future in which all people will have access to clean and healthy jobs, homes and environments, and the education needed to build these.

Our tour today doesn’t yet lead to a just transition. There is much work to do ahead. But we can get started, listening and learning from people in Cancer Alley."

EiJ Case Study Framework Slide 1

"In this tour, many of you will be introduced to Southern Louisiana for the first time. It is a beautiful landscape, though now heavily polluted. It is also v†ery culturally rich. You'll get a glimpse of this on our tour through a stop at the Fee-Fo-Lay Cafe. It is also -- like many communities facing environmental injustice -- a very complicated place -- politically, economically and socially, because of the heavy presence of industry, beasu long-running, compound vulnerability are now exacerbated by the extreme weather associated with climate change. Because of COVID-19. There is a lot going on. Many different kinds of data, analysis and knowledge are needed to make sense of it all. This is why we’ll also introduce you to our EiJ case study framework and digital archiving project."

EiJ Case Study Framework Slide 2

"The case study framework has ten questions, which together guide both characterization of places facing environmental injustice and identification of actions that would improve conditions in these places. These case studies are always a work in progress -- partly because of new hazards, but also because of the never-ending need to draw in more history, more textured understanding of stakeholders in the mix today, and more possibilities for protective action and inclusive prosperity going forward.

The case study framework is designed to see all these aspects of environmental injustice together. It is also designed to allow us to work together, thus working more quickly and drawing in different experiences and forms of expertise. UCI students, working in groups, produce quite extensive case studies in a week or two. We’re also running workshops with community activists to help them draw their different experiences and insights together, interlaced with knowledge of university researchers like us.'

EiJ Case Study Slide

"Lastly, the case study framework provides a structure -- what we call an architecture for preserving our research and knowledge over time so that others can use and build on it giong forward. As I know the community activists with us now are aware, there are many dimensions of environmental injustice that call for analysis and action, and floods of related documentation. It is hard to keep up with. The digital archive we are building provides a place for this documentation, and ways to focus both on particular places -- like Southern Louisiana -- and also on cross-cutting themes -- so that we can compare sites and work together on shared problems. Think of it as a house with different doorways, allowing for us to see environmental injustice from different angles.

The tour we’ll take you on now enters through one among many doorways into the material -- moving through a number of stops that will help you understand Louisiana’s River Parishes as a site of both environmental injustice and resistance. We’ll only be able to show you a little of the material at each site: you can return for further exploration later. You can also suggest material for us to add to the collection for a particular site. Our archive needs to continue to grow.

After the tour we’ll invite you to enter through a different doorway, moving through our case study questions. You can do this just after our tour, or later, on your own time or in a class or workshop we can help set up.

There are also other doorways into the material -- moving through it to produce creative writing or picture books for kids, for example, or to produce Instagram stories. Let us know what you think is important and what talents you have to share.

Let’s go now, though to the tour that follows the lead of organizations like the Whitney Plantation Museum and LEAN."