The present article utilizes the constructivist approach of International Relations (IR) to analyze the international normative impact of the Bhopal chemical accident, focusing on the constitutive role of the human action on the International Environmental Politics (IEP). It adopts an articulation of constructivist concepts, useful to visualize the structure in which the local event is embedded, as well as the social construction process of either the event and the international norm launched. The assumption is that a co-constitution relation between structure and agents, who are responsible for the social construction of the event, is preponderant and that, consequently, it is impossible to exclude these elements or their connecting links from the analysis. The article aims at understanding, on the one hand, the way in which the event is socially constructed, referring to the ideational and normative structure of environmental protection and sustainable development; and, on the other, how the local event produces political, social and normative impact at international level. As a result, the global features of local events become evident, specially considering the ideational and normative fulfillment of an environment consciousness, whose political milestones are the Stockholm 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment and the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro. Therefore, the article emphasizes the cultural and institutional environmental context as whole, pointing out the local/global relationship. It also focuses on the role of the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a leader agency in the chemical safety field, in an attempt to indicate why the normative construction process has taken place on the forum of that International Organization (IO).
International Relations; International Environmental Politics (IEP); Constructivism; Bhopal; ILO Convention 174; Local/Global Relations
