Greenpeace and the IMO: A Position Paper

The Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) is a subsidiary body consisting of all members of the IMO and is concerned with issues relating to the prevention and control of marine pollution by ships.

At the 44th session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee, the IMO established a correspondence group to identify the safety and environmental risks associated with current ship breaking practices and analyze how IMO might contribute to resolving the problems.

The MEPC decided at its 48th session to develop recommendatory guidelines to focus on the design, operation and preparation for recycling of ships. Draft guidelines have been finalized at MEPC’s 49th session in July 2003 and are expected to be an IMO assembly resolution by December 2003.

Some see these recently-developed guidelines as a step forward in the campaign to clean up the shipping industry. Ships are now required to carry a Green passport specifying the hazardous substances that are on board, and shipbuilders now have to start building clean ships.

However a fatal assumption in the IMO guidelines is that the industry can still freely export (to a Non-OECD country) a ship without decontaminating it prior to breaking. This means continuing the illegal export of hazardous waste to poor countries. The IMO guidelines are also not clear, which makes it difficult to know what is required of shipowners and detracts from their potential usefulness.

Often they impose vague obligations, which appear to be little real benefit as guidelines because of their uncertainty. For example, it is suggested that shipowners “take measures to facilitate the controlled drainage, by the recycling yard, of potentially harmful liquids from the ship.” This attempts to impose an obligation on a shipowner to take unspecified “measures” and potentially be involved in operational matters in a shipbreaking yard after the ownership has passed to the yard.

The IMO guidelines also have lot of “square Brackets”, meaning that there are contentious issues, which will need to be resolved in future.

GREENPEACE POSITION ON IMO GUIDELINES

The Guidelines may be a step forward but:

1. The guidelines continue to put the burden for the handling of hazardous materials on the shipbreaking country. The ship-owner has only indirect responsibility, which means he is only encouraged to choose a recycling state or yard that fulfills environmentally sound management, rather than taking responsibility for removing hazardous substances himself.

2. The guidelines are voluntary and there is no guarantee that they will be applied by shipowners or shipbreakers. Based on the experiences of the Voluntary Code of Practice developed by the industry (where the majority of the shioowners do not comply with even the easy standards developed by their own federations) Greenpeace believes that the IMO guidelines will not at all change the current practices of shipowners.

3. The IMO failed to accept and complement the existing legislation and regulations dealing with the export of hazardous wastes (Basel Convention). The guidelines are therefore outside international law. Greenpeace is concerned that the new guidelines could be misused to cover up the illegal business. It is likely that the environmental and people in Asia will still continue to be exposed to hazardous substances.