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by BASEL ACTION NETWORK and
GREENPEACE INTERNATIONAL
According to the two environmental organizations, the Panel Report fails to recognize that under international laws dealing with the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes, ships containing or contaminated with hazardous wastes must be considered hazardous waste and are subject to numerous controls and prohibitions. Under the Basel Convention, even in the current situation where the United States is not a party to the treaty, it will be impossible for ship scrap destination countries that are Basel Convention parties like India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan to continue to import hazardous ships for scrapping from the United States. This is due to the fact that under the Basel Convention, parties are generally not allowed to trade with non-parties, and also due to the fact that the Basel convention agreed already to ban all exports of hazardous wastes from developed countries to developing countries by January 1, of this year. Further, the critique claims that the United States has also failed to note and act on legally binding obligations placed upon it by a 1986 decision taken by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which requires that exports of hazardous wastes from OECD countires to non-OECD countries be prohibited unless consent is received from the importing country and unless the wastes are directed to an environmentally sound facility. "The United States has conveniently ignored international legal obligations in order to keep open the back door so that they can sweep out their hazardous waste problems to the rest of the world,'"said Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network. "It is hypocrisy that while the U.S. government pays lip service to environmental justice at home, they are very willing to allow the poorest global communities like India and Bangladesh to become their 'toxic colonies'." The brutal conditions of South Asian shipyards have been the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series that appeared in the Baltimore Sun in recent months. According to Basel Action Network sources in India, on average about one person each day has been killed in the operations at Alang in the State of Gujarat. Almost no precautions are taken for explosives, toxics and other hazardous substances and many toxic wastes from the ships are simply dumped into the sea. Despite the acknowledgment of the substandard conditions at such ship scrapping sites, the U.S. Interagency Panel Report simply claimed that the "U.S. had a mandate to sell ships and the authority to sell them abroad." While recognizing that many may perceive this "practice as equivalent to exporting one's worker safety and health and environmental problems... these perceptions must be balanced against the economic realities of developing countries." "A mandate to sell ships is not a mandate to dump toxic wastes," said Nityanand Jayaraman of Greenpeace International of India. "It is not a license to kill. While India wants jobs, we do not want them at the cost of the people's lives, health and environment."
For more information contact: Jim Puckett Marcelo Furtado More News |
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