India’s Alang will suffer if EU ship breaking law passed
European, Turkish and Chinese ship breakers are set to benefit from strict new EU laws on scrapping old ships, potentially significantly impacting South Asian beach scrap yards.
Of 1,026 ocean-going ships scrapped in 2014, 641 were broken up on beaches in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, according to figures from the NGO Shipbreaking Platform. Cargo ships and cruise liners that have reached the end of their useful life are driven at full speed onto beaches and stripped down by hundreds of unskilled workers using simple tools with little health and safety measures or environmental protections.
Chemicals routinely leak into the ocean when the tide comes in and there is a huge human cost, according to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, which estimates that during the last 20 years 470 workers have been killed in Alang-Sosiya, the world’s largest stretch of ship-breaking beaches.
Almost half of all scrapped ships are sent to the beaches of Alang, known as the graveyard of all ships. Karmenu Vella, European Commissioner for the Environment and Maritime Affairs, says “the shameful practice of European ships being dismantled on beaches” will be ended with the introduction of the new law.
The measure will require that EU-registered ships be scrapped only at sustainable facilities with proven safeguards for the environment and its workers.
An approved list of ship breakers is expected to be published next year and is likely to include yards in China, Turkey, North America and the European Union, but not South Asia.
European, Turkish and Chinese ship breakers are set to benefit from strict new EU laws on scrapping old ships, potentially significantly impacting South Asian beach scrap yards.
Of 1,026 ocean-going ships scrapped in 2014, 641 were broken up on beaches in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, according to figures from the NGO Shipbreaking Platform. Cargo ships and cruise liners that have reached the end of their useful life are driven at full speed onto beaches and stripped down by hundreds of unskilled workers using simple tools with little health and safety measures or environmental protections.
Chemicals routinely leak into the ocean when the tide comes in and there is a huge human cost, according to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, which estimates that during the last 20 years 470 workers have been killed in Alang-Sosiya, the world’s largest stretch of ship-breaking beaches.
Almost half of all scrapped ships are sent to the beaches of Alang, known as the graveyard of all ships. Karmenu Vella, European Commissioner for the Environment and Maritime Affairs, says “the shameful practice of European ships being dismantled on beaches” will be ended with the introduction of the new law.
The measure will require that EU-registered ships be scrapped only at sustainable facilities with proven safeguards for the environment and its workers.
An approved list of ship breakers is expected to be published next year and is likely to include yards in China, Turkey, North America and the European Union, but not South Asia.