'One Ship, One Death': The Environmental and Ethical Implications of the Ship Recycling Industry (original) (raw)
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Ship recycling and marine pollution
Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2010
This paper discusses the historical background, structure and enforcement of the '2009 Hong Kong International Convention on the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships.' the 2009 Hong Kong Convention establishes control and enforcement instruments related to ship recycling, determining the control rights of Port States and the obligations of Flag States, Parties and recycling facilities under its jurisdiction. The Convention also controls the communication and exchange of information procedures, establishes a reporting system to be used upon the completion of recycling, and outlines an auditing system for detecting violations. The Convention, however, also contains some deficiencies. This paper concludes these deficiencies will eventually influence the final acceptance of this Convention by the international community.
Trade Law and Development, 2010
The increasing dominance of developing countries like India, China, Bangladesh and Pakistan in the global ship-breaking industry illustrates the paradoxical nature of economic globalization. While such operations provide access to employment and cheap material resources, they also pose serious long-term and irreversible harm to local environment and human health. In addition, the transnational character of the shipbreaking trade has militated against effective domestic oversight of its environmental hazards and has turned international regulation into an imperative.
Fordham Environmental Law Review, 2020
Ship-breaking is one of the most dangerous occupations in the world and widely known as a pollution-heavy industry. This industry is currently concentrated primarily in three South Asian developing countries, namely Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Ensuring the safe and environmentally sound recycling of ships remains a global concern. There are many international regulations which apply to the activities of ship-breaking, but none of them address the issue in a comprehensive manner. The most relevant international instrument governing ship recycling, the 2009 Hong Kong Convention remains unenforceable due to non-ratification by the chief ship recycling states. The only enforceable international instrument closely relevant to ship recycling activity is the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste and their Disposal adopted in 1989. However due to its exceedingly pro-environmental character, its applicability over End of Life ships remains uncertain. As a stopgap measure, this article will attempt to explore other currently enforceable international laws that can potentially be utilized to govern the industry in the face of uncertainty with these two mainstream legal instruments. This article postulates that a prompt solution to this controversial global activity is unlikely to occur anytime soon.
Marine Navigation and Safety of Sea Transportation, 2011
The new international convention on ship recycling was adopted by IMO in May 2009 in Hong Kong, China, in accordance with IMO in December 2009. The Hong Kong International Convention for the environmentally sound management and security ships 1 recycling is to ensure that vessels are to be recycled once they have reached the end of its useful life not involve an unreasonable risk to human health and safety or the environment. This new agreement includes: the design, construction, operation and preparation of ships to facilitate safe and environmentally sound recycling, without compromising the safety and operational efficiency of ships, the operation of ship recycling facilities in terms of Safety and Environment and the establishment of an enforcement mechanism for ship recycling, incorporating certification and reporting requirements. The text has been developed over three years of preparatory work before the Conference, with contributions from Member States of IMO and non-governmental organizations and in cooperation with the ILO and the parties of Convention Basilea 2 .
Journal of International Maritime Safety, Environmental Affairs, and Shipping Taylor and Francis, 2021
Ship recycling operation is widely considered as one of the most hazardous activities in the shipbuilding industry due to environmental pollution and health risks to workers. Stringent environmental and labour compliance standards enforced over the past few decades in developed nations have substantially increased the costs, shifting the recycling operations to nations in the Global South where these operations entail lower cost. This paper provides an overview of the ship recycling industry and highlights the consequential adverse effects on environment and human beings in the nations engaged in ship recycling and also elaborates on the guidelines proposed by international organisations to address these issues. It is argued that unless the externalities on the environment and human health are not taken into account, a sustainable model of ship recycling cannot be achieved. The paper proposes the formation of a consortium by recycling nations particularly India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, whose synergies will help to safeguard the interests of the workforce and environment in these countries. A ship recycling industry fund, under the auspices of International Maritime Organisation exclusively for meeting the cost of ship recycling, is also mooted for consideration. The availability of this fund, along with efficient policy formulations initiated by the consortium of major ship recycling nations, can play a major role in addressing the externalities and turning the recycling operation environment-and labour-friendly.
Ishtiaque Ahmed, 2020
Environmental protection and economic development are closely intertwined. The global treaty on ship breaking has been a cause of intense debate over the rights of economic development, environmental protection and the allocation of responsibility for environmental harm arising from shipbreaking between ship owning and ship recycling nations. These countries traditionally happen to be the developed and the developing countries respectively. In this global treaty, the concerns of the key ship recycling nations, namely their economic priority and desperate need for alleviation of poverty, have been overlooked. This has resulted in the progression of negative externality in the domestic jurisdictions of all key ship recycling nations. If the race to the bottom and divergence created by this negative externality between private and social costs is not corrected by legal measures, and polluters are allowed to continue to operate until reaching the maximum point of their private benefit, this may bring no aggregate benefit to society, but will result in an obvious environmental and social disaster leading to a threat to the sustainability of the industry. In this capitalist society, the law as it exists would hardly influence the tug of war between groups representing the powerful industry on one hand and inanimate objects such as ecology and the toiling masses on the other. The HKC was adopted back in 2009 as a response to the global call after three decades of mobocracy and lawlessness in the shipbreaking industry. If the demand of greater equity in this global pact is not met as suggested in this article, sustainability of this global industry in the near term may remain far from the reality.
A Gap Analysis of Ship-Recycling Practices in Indonesia
Recycling, 2021
Ship recycling is gaining attention in Indonesia due to the increase in end-of-life ships and uneconomical nationally flagged ships, and is considered a prospective source of economic development and employment opportunity, and yet conceivably poses a threat to the health and safety of workers and the environment. There are international and national regulations that govern ship-recycling activities to ensure that the hazardous impacts of the industry are minimized. We investigated the disparity between current ship-breaking practices in Indonesia and the requirements of related international and national regulations, with the findings intended for use as a stepping stone to proposing a strategy to establish a green and sustainable ship-recycling industry. A benchmark study of the world’s leading ship-recycling countries was conducted, and a gap analysis was performed by comparing existing international and national regulations with current ship-breaking practices in Indonesia. We i...