BHURBAN: Experts and government
representatives on Monday pledged to jointly tackle degradation of marine and
coastal ecosystems in the country caused by “environmentally-damaging and
unsustainable” ship-recycling activities in the Gadani shipbreaking yard.
They also underlined the need for concerted
policy measures to protect Pakistan’s marine and coastal ecosystems from
further aggravation by ensuring that ship-recycling activities are carried out
in a scientific and environment-friendly manner.
“We must realize that the
environmentally-sound management of waste from the ship-breaking activities is
inevitable to fight escalating coastal and marine pollution and the risks these
have posed to the sustainability of the coastal and marine ecologies,”
Additional Secretary Ministry of Science and Technology, Muhammad Ashraf,
stressed at a two-day national policy workshop on “Hazardous Waste Assessment
for the Environmentally-Sound Management of Waste from Ship recycling in the
Pakistan” here at a local hotel.
He, however, pointed out, that there was also
a pressing need for setting standards and hammering out regulations in
consultation with all relevant stakeholders for handling the waste from the
ship-dismantling activities in a manner that no more damage the marine and
coastal ecologies.
Joint Secretary Climate Change Ministry,
Iftikhar-ul-Hassan Shah Gilani, said complacency in this regard was no option
and urged all relevant government and non-governmental stakeholders to join
government’s efforts to address escalating sea pollution, which has badly
eroded the country’s marine ecology.
“Pakistan is a signatory to a number of
international Conventions and Protocols on various environmental issues, especially
hazardous chemicals and wastes, which include Basel, Rotterdam, Stockholm,
Vienna Conventions and Montreal Protocol.
In the light of these conventions and
protocols, the climate change ministry has already taken various policy
measures for the protection and conservation of environment and natural
resources. These policy measures have been lauded internationally,” he
remarked.
Gilani further said that ship-dismantling
fall under the purview of Basel Convention on the control of transboundary
movement of hazardous waste and their disposal. Such dismantling activities,
when not carried out in environmental safeguards generates different hazardous
wastes such as asbestos, heavy metals, Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs),
hydrocarbons, ozone-depleting substances, waste oils, etc.
The joint secretary further told the
participants that to address the harmful effects of hazardous wastes and
chemicals during the ship-recycling activities, the climate change ministry
signed an MoU with the Secretariat of Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm
Conventions, under which the ministry was given financial support of US $
279,843 for a project.
This project focuses on the development of
inventories of hazardous and non-hazardous wastes in the Gadani shipbreaking
yard, where ship recycling takes place, he explained and added that following
the development of the inventories, business plans/cases would be rolled out to
assist government and industry to establish the requisite infrastructure for
environmentally-safe ship-recycling.
Susan wingfield, programme officer at the
Geneva-based Secretariat of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions,
said Pakistan is not alone in the South Asia region as far as ship-recycling
activities in environmentally-harmful manner is concerned.
“India and Bangladesh have not been fully
able to have ship-dismantling activities in a scientific and
environmental-friendly manner. Lack of technical and scientific expertise are
major cause behind the grim state of ship-recycling in the region,” she said.
She informed the participants of the policy
workshop that these countries including Pakistan were being fully supported in
all possible manner by the relevant United Nation’s agencies to protect their
marine and coastal ecologies from environmental degradation being caused by
shipbreaking activities.
Deputy Director (Chemical) climate change
ministry, Dr. Zaigham Abbas briefed about the goals of the policy workshop.
He said, Introducing the draft Hazardous
Waste Assessment Report developed for the Gadani/Hub industrial region in
Balochistan and elaborating on the preliminary conceptual design for hazardous
waste management infrastructure in the region, the costing of such
infrastructure and business cases for its development are key goals of the
moot.
He highlighted that the climate change
ministry is making all-out efforts to ahive goal of the environmental-safe
management of hazardous waste as required by the Hong Kong Convention and the
Basel Convention.
Dr. Zaighan Abbas said as a result of the
Ministry’s efforts the recycling yards would be expected to ensure that all
hazardous materials present in ships for dismantling were properly identified,
labeled, removed and packaged at the yard in a safe and environmentally sound
manner.
“At present, he country currently does not
have facilities for the treatment, storage and disposal of hazardous wastes in
scientific and environmentally-safe manner from ship-recycling. But by dint of
the project on the environmentally sound management of waste from
ship-dismantling, these fundamental issues would be resolved,” he highlighted.
The workshop was attended, among others, by
representatives of the relevant federal and provincial government departments,
representatives of Pakistan Shipbreaking Yard owners’ Association,
environmentalists, policy experts, researchers, academicians and scientists,
who discussed the severity of the threats to the marine ecology systems.
Source: samaa tv. 13 June 2016
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