Based on a 2007 Supreme Court
ruling, the Union Ministry of Steel has issued a new indigenous code for shipbreaking
to be followed in India.
The new code, a copy of which is with The
Indian Express, does not make any reference to the Basel Convention, an
international agreement ratified by India.
Last year, the Supreme Court had ruled that
"authorities shall strictly comply with the norms laid down in the Basel
Convention or any other subsequent provisions that may be adopted by the
Central Government in aid of a clean and pollution-free maritime environment"
before allowing end-of-life ships to beach for dismantling.
The SC judgment was in regard to the
disputed entry of the former oil tanker Exxon Valdez at Alang-Sosiya Ship
Recycling Yard (ASSRY) last year. The vessel was involved in the infamous March
1989 oil spill when an estimated 2.5 lakh barrels of oil eventually
contaminated almost 26,000 sq kms of open ocean and 2,414 kms of Alaska's
shoreline.
While the SC allowed the ship to beach, its
judgment led to some confusion among local authorities and traders at ASSRY,
considered the world's largest ship-recycling yard. They halted buying
end-of-life ships and left several stranded off-shore for several weeks until
the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests finally issued a clarification
saying the 2007 SC guidelines and not Basel would be followed.
Under the more than two-decades-old Basel
Convention of Trans-boundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes, end-of-life ships
can be classified as "waste" and their movement restricted by
provisions such as "written notification by the state of export to... the
states of import and transit", "a reporting system for ships destined
for recycling" and prior decontamination.
Activists have in the past used the
convention's provisions to try and block such ships from entering India for
dismantling.
The Steel Ministry's new code, issued
earlier this month and expected to be published in the Gazette of India soon,
does not specify any mechanism for such prior notification except for the ship
to notify the Indian Coast Guard or Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC)
once it enters Indian waters and is headed for a recycling yard.
While the Basel convention
also asks for prior decontamination of hazardous wastes from onboard
end-of-life ships, the new code specifies that decontamination of non-loose
forms of such wastes should be done after the beaching process and disposed of
properly before dismantling begins. Non-loose waste refers to materials such as
asbestos and PCBs which were earlier used as insulating material in engine
chambers.
Loose hazardous wastes, however, continue
to be disallowed as the new code broadly follows rules drawn up after a 2007
Supreme Court ruling on ship-recycling, albeit with a few modifications and
some greater detail on certain issues.
On reporting waste inventory, the new code
instead refers to the International Maritime Organization's Hong Kong
Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships, 2009,
which is still awaiting ratification.
Source:
Indian Express. 30 March 2013
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