Shipbreaking is still a dangerous business, and a new convention has disappointed many

Shipping is one of the most cyclical of industries and nowhere is this feast or famine more acutely felt than in the shipbreaking sector. In good times, such as the five years before the financial collapse of 2008, shipowners try their hardest to make even the oldest patched-up rust bucket trade at all times.

Come a downturn, however, and the beaches of south Asia become cluttered with huge metal hulks. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and China carry out 80% of the world’s shipbreaking.

Globally, ship demolition rose to a 13-year high in 2009. London-based Clarkson Research Services says, in a new report, that this is because the shipping industry has continued to wrestle with its worst downturn for a generation.

And this surge in business comes at a time when the environmentally hazardous and dangerous ship scrapping sector is at a crossroads.

Members of the International Maritime Organisation, a UN body, adopted the world’s first ship recycling convention in Hong Kong in May 2009. While this was being hailed as “a new chapter in IMO’s history” by Efthimios Mitropoulos, the body’s secretary-general, protesters outside condemned the deal as a step backwards.

The convention comprises a set of guidelines and legally binding rules governing the shipbreaking industry to ensure that “ships, when recycled, do not pose any unnecessary risk to human health, the safety of workers in the industry or the environment”.

Protesters from the NGO Platform on Shipbreaking say the convention is a sham. They call for a ban on ship beaching before recycling. Group director Ingvild Jenssen says the convention will not prevent a single toxic ship from being dumped on south Asia’s beaches.

Referring to the controversial convention, Greenpeace representative Rizwana Hasan says: “When the workers and the environment of developing countries desperately needed a life ring, the IMO threw them useless paper.”

She says the convention also legitimised the beaching of vessels and rejected funding mechanisms, such as a mandatory shipowners’ fund, that could support use of safer and cleaner operations.

When a ship is beached, it is sent full steam ahead and rammed onto the coastline where, piranha-like, workers set about disassembling the old tub.

Dangers on board

The convention is not set to come into law for another three years. In the meantime, the dangerous conditions at shipbreaking yards across south Asian yards have resulted in a soaring number of accidents, fires and deaths this year, with more than 20 deaths in March alone. One Bangladeshi NGO suggests that 1,000 shipbreakers have died over the past 12 years because of poor conditions at the yards, with another 4,000 to 5,000 injured.

And the surge in business is also having a negative effect on the local ecosystems.

Professor Abul Bashar, from Dhaka University’s biology department, says: “Biodiversity of the coastal area is currently under threat as the industry does not have proper measures to protect the environment. Soil pollution is on the rise too.”

This is set to worsen following the recent decision by the Dhaka government to ease restrictions on ship scrapping. Shipowners now no longer need to prove their vessels are free of toxic substances.

There is, however, still one destination for shipowners keen to recycle their ships in a more sustainable fashion: China. Ships are broken up there in a dry dock, rather than rammed into a beach, so wastage is much more limited.



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