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INTERNATIONAL CHAMBER OF SHIPPING DEVELOPING SOME PROPOSALS TO RESOLVE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE

By Marcus Hand, Business Times, Shipping Times, Singapore

SINGAPORE, 18 February 1999 -- The shipping industry needs to seriously address environmental problems caused by ship scrapping. Chairman of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), Rolf Westfal-Larsen, told a gathering of shipping people here that the ICS was working on how to address recent moves by some European countries and now the European Commission, against owners who by sending their ships for scrapping in the Indian sub-continent and China are breaching rules on the export of toxic wastes.

The ships often contain hazardous substances, such as asbestos, which the shipbreakers in Asia are not equipped to deal with safely, resulting in serious consequences for both workers and the environment.

"This is a serious problem and one that the industry must address seriously," Mr Westfal-Larsen said.

The ICS is setting up a working group to try and develop some "sensible proposals" on the issue, such as an industry code of practice. Noting that the Asian Shipowners Forum (ASF) has had ship scrapping project on its a agenda for a number of years aimed at encouraging scrapping and the modernising of facilities, Mr Westfal-Larsen said that the ICS would be looking to the ASF for expertise on the issue.

Mr Westfal-Larsen was speaking at a seminar organised by the Singapore Shipping Association (SSA) last week.

The issue of ship scrapping was brought to the fore recently by a series of protests by Greenpeace, including one in Singapore last month, against the P&O Nedlloyd containership Encounter Bay, which was on its last voyage before being scrapped in China.

Environmental groups such as Greenpeace are campaigning for hazardous substances such as asbestos to be stripped out ofships in Europe, where the equipment is available for this to be done safely, and then sent to Asia for scrapping.

Shipowners say that this is not possible as without asbestos, which is used for fire safety protection, the ships would be unsafe to sail. Almost all the world's shipbreaking yards capable of scrapping large ships are however located in Asia.

"While ship scrapping is quite a separate industry from ship operation, nobody can benefit from a situation where the natural replacement of old ships is hampered by unjustified restrictions on selling them for scrap," he said. However, he also noted that the ships built in the 1960s did contain asbestos and the working conditions in the scrapping facilities in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh would not be permitted in countries such as Singapore or Norway. "Historically little thought has been given to ship scrapping arrangements when ships are ordered and built," he said.

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