Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
France - French President Chirac has announced a dramatic recall of the asbestos-laden warship Clemenceau — it will be turning around and going back to France. Our actions, emails to Chirac and an embarrassing international scandal left France with little choice but to abandon the misguided attempt to dump its own toxic mess on India.
“This is a huge victory for the environment, and for the campaign headed up by us and other organisations” said Pascal Husting, Greenpeace France Executive Director.
Back in December we highlighted France’s attempts to dump an old warship leaden with toxics like deadly asbestos on India. France didn’t want to deal with its own toxic mess - despite our actions to block the departure of the Clemenceau from the French port of Toulon. We said it was wrong for France to dump a 27,000-ton warship full of asbestos, PCBs, lead, mercury, and other toxic chemicals in India to be broken up by hand in a scrapyard where impoverished workers are injured and die every day. France insisted it was right and sent the ship to India anyway.
We weren’t going to let them off that easily. In January we reboarded the warship in the Mediterranean and called on Egypt to block the passage of the ship. The French government intervened at the highest level to ensure the ship could continue to head to the ship-breaking beaches of India.
Meanwhile in India there was a growing media and public scandal surrounding the Indian Government permitting France to dump a ship full of hazardous waste in India. Indian courts ordered the warship to stay out of Indian waters pending a final ruling. Still France kept the asbestos ship steaming towards India.
As the Indian Government dithered and the French Government stubbornly insisted on the dumping plan, media interest intensified and levels of public anger in India and France increased with every day the ship continued to steam towards India.
Chirac was due to visit India on Febuary 20. Today he announced that the warship would be turned around and head back to France.
The case of the Clemenceau has become a symbol of the moral injustice of rich countries dumping their toxic waste on poorer countries. Having tried and failed to offload the ship to other countries to avoid responsibility for the toxic mess of its own making, France has finally been forced to clean up its own act.
While we savour this victory and the return of the Clemenceau to France it is just a poster child of a wider problem. Every year a vast decrepit armada bearing a dangerous cargo of toxic substances, asbestos, PCBs and heavy metals, ends up in ship breaking yards in Bangladesh, India, China and Pakistan, where they are cut up in the crudest of fashions, taking a huge toll on human health and the local environment. Ship breaking is one of the most visible forms of the trade in toxic waste that ends up dumped in developing countries
We believe that rich governments should look at the precedent of the Clemenceau case and take action to stop the dumping of toxic waste in all forms on poor countries. Only effective action will prevent another Clemenceau-style scandal.
What is shipbreaking ?
To know more about shipbreaking and the solutions to the problem.
End of Life Vessels
After 25-30 years ships are at the end of their sailing life. These ‘End of Life Vessels’ are sold and dismantled to recover the valuable steel. About 95% of the ship consists of steel. But the ships also contain large amounts of hazardous materials.
Asian states))
In the 1970s shipbreaking was concentrated in Europe. Performed at docks, it was a highly mechanised industrial operation. But the costs of upholding environmental, health and safety standards increased. So the shipping industry moved to poorer Asian states.
Pristine beaches
A lot of ships end on the once pristine beaches of India, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan and Turkey. Workers there scrap the ships without any protection. Toxic waste is released into the environment. The only ones who profit are the ship owners. They extract an average US$ 1.9 million profit per End of Life Vessel.
Scrap market
Every year around 600-700 larger sea vessels are taken out of service and brought to Asia for scrap. In the 1990s they had an aggregate tonnage of around 15 million dwt a year. However, the scrap market increases and will increase substantially the following years. In 2001 the total number of vessels (608) sold for scrap already totalled a figure of 28 million dwt. This marks a year on year growth of nearly 25% (Source E.A. Gibson Shipbrokers).
Single hull tankers
The reasons of the growth of the scrap market are twofold. In 1999, the Maltese-flagged oil tanker Erika collapsed. The Erika was a 25 year old single-hull vessel, chartered by oil company TotalFina. It leaked more than 10,000 tons of heavy oil, polluting 400 km of coast of Brittany (France). After this accident, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) decided to phase-out all single-hull oil tankers.
Phase-out
Another shocking accident happened in November 2002. The single hull oil tanker Prestige sank and polluted up to 4,000 km coastline in Spain and France with fuel oil. The EU then agreed to an accelerated phase-out schedule. The phase-out means that - starting from 1 January 2003 - many tankers will have to be taken out of service EXTRA in the coming years. Roughly 2,200 single hull oil tankers from the 4,000 crude oil tankers and oil products tankers (over 5,000 dwt). Together these tankers have a dwt of 175 million.
Increasing fleet
The other reason for the growth of the scrap market is the increase of the world fleet (> 100 gt) during the last decades. In 1960 there were around 15,000 ships with an aggregate dwt of 84 million. In 2000 there were around 62,000 ships with an aggregate dwt of 828 million. (Source: Lloyd’s Marine Intelligence Unit.) With the growth in the world fleet the need to replace old ships for new ships increases as well. The result: a larger tonnage that has to be scrapped.
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