|
Matthew Vella
The Minister for Environment and Rural Affairs George Pullicino said no immediate action was “deemed appropriate” to be taken on the recent Basel Convention declaration that calls on its 163 signatories to prevent the export of end-of-life vessels for scrapping to countries unless they grant permission. Pullicino said the decision is not legally binding.
Last week in Geneva, the Basel Convention declared that ships can be considered toxic waste under international law and its 163 signatories must control the export of ships under the terms of the Convention. Acknowledging the risk of damage to human health and the environment caused by the transboundary movement of ships, the Basel Convention declared end-of-life vessels as waste and called on its signatories to prohibit the exports of those vessels which do not have the consent of recipient countries. Instead, shipbreaking will have to be carried out in an environmentally sound manner, to minimise the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes.
According to a Greenpeace report on the shipbreaking industry entitled ‘Playing Hide and Seek,’ fifteen ships under the Maltese flagged have already been dumped in Asia this year; in 2003, it was 34, ranking Malta second after Panama as the country which exported most toxic ships for breaking to Asia. Shipbreaking shifted to Asian countries from Europe in ports and beaches where environmental and health and safety measures are poor or non-existent. Ship owners retrieve an average of USD1.9 million (Lm800,000) for a scrapped ship. Wages for Asian workers in the breaking industry are low, and according to Greenpeace they are constantly exposed to enormous health hazards.
Greenpeace has reported that asbestos is broken by hand by unprotected workers, a notorious practice which is automatically conducive to permanent respiratory problems such as asbestosis, due to the inhaling of dust fibres which scar the lungs.
Although the Convention’s declaration delivers a serious blow to the global trade of exporting ships, Minister George Pullicino has told MaltaToday that the Secretariat of the Basel Convention also declared that the 163 parties are not legally bound to control the export of ships under the terms of the Convention.
“Malta particularly supports the view that any legally binding solution that is developed for this issue could be established under the auspices of the International Maritime Organisation, the International Labour Organisation or Basel Convention. Malta is also highly supportive of the idea of the Joint Working Group and looks forward to participating in this forum. Malta has always maintained that ship dismantling requires a global solution. These developments, particularly the setting up of the Joint Working Group, represent important steps taken towards the future establishment of a global legal regime governing ship dismantling.”
The Joint Working Group, comprised of the Basel Convention, the IMO and the ILO, is still discussing a possible reconciliation of the different perspectives with respect to the shipbreaking industry.
Communications and Competitiveness Minister Censu Galea said Malta would welcome any arrangement that would ensure “implementation of such reconciled views worldwide. This would in turn ensure that the commercial interests of shipping registers in States Parties to the Basel Convention and to the IMO Conventions will not be prejudiced.”
Both Ministers are not expected to take any unilateral action on the decision before the work of the Joint Working Group is resumed, or before the IMO finalises the establishment of mandatory requirements, including a reporting system for ships destined for dismantling, that ensure an equivalent level of control as established under the Basel Convention. Basel’s Conference of Parties has settled on pursuing the consideration of practical, legal and technical aspects of ship dismantling in order to make suggestions on legally binding solutions to the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties in November 2006.
According to the Basle Action Network, the Convention will now act to prevent the “environmental injustice that finds almost 100 per cent of the world’s toxic ships being exported and dumped on the poorest communities on earth,” a situation that is estimated to kill a person per day either from cancer or gas explosions.
Greenpeace has called on the Maltese government to brush up its act and take on Basel’s international obligations on waste shipments. But with the fifth largest maritime fleet in the world, it is debatable whether the Maltese government will giving up on this source of revenue for the sake of unilateral action on the prevention of toxic waste dumping.
Many in the shipping industry opposed the Basel Convention’s involvement in the question of shipbreaking, hoping instead that the International Maritime Organisation would assume total control over end-of-life ships and impose far less rigorous standards. The United States, Japan, and representatives of the shipping industry fought to block the decision. The US, which is not a Basel signatory, denounced the decision arguing that it does not believe end-of-life ships are waste.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
|
