“Shipbreaking” #15
Goodbye Bangladesh, hello Philippines?
On March 18th 2009 the Bangladeshi High Court of Justice ordered the closure within two weeks of all ship-breaking yards operating without environmental clearance. Considering the state of all the ship-breaking yards in the country this would mean completely closing down the field. The decision also prohibits the importation of vessels which have not undergone any preliminary extraction of hazardous materials (asbestos, PCBs, heavy metals, hydrocarbons …) To prepare an appeal against this decision the industries obtained a delay of three weeks. In the meantime, the vessels continue to arrive and are beached in Chittagong. We are left to see how this decision will be followed up, the decisions effects and if it will encourage the Bangladeshi government to put standards in place and follow up the environmental and social conditions of ship-breaking or if the demolition market will move elsewhere: due to the crisis the Japanese ship owners have an influx of vessels to be demolished and are pushing the Filipino government to launch into the demolition business.
