U.S. moves to lift a moratorium on scrapping obsolete Navy ships overseas could cause environmental damage in developing nations where the vessels would be dismantled, campaigners say.
"This is an ecological time bomb," said Jim Puckett, a U.S.-based coordinator for the Basel Action Network, an international coalition that promotes adherence to the Basel Convention, a 152-nation U.N. treaty on waste disposal.
Developing countries want the ships so that they can recycle their steel, but the vessels also contain hazards like asbestos and chemical pollutants, Puckett told reporters.
"The United States has adopted the environmental justice principle, which says no population should suffer a disproportionate burden, but it seems that principle stops at the national border," he said.
In the United States, a backlog estimated at 350 to 400 warships and cargo ships sit in ports around the country waiting to be recycled, a remnant of a Navy that once consisted of 600 ships but has now been cut to just over 300. Many of the ships are docked on the James River in Virginia and several have been dismantled at the former Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.
The Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 2 by U.S. President George W. Bush, includes provisions allowing the country's Maritime Administration to launch a pilot program to send aging National Defense Reserve Fleet vessels overseas for scrapping.
The law says, however, that the Maritime Administration should first check that dismantlement "can be accomplished abroad in a manner that appropriately addresses concerns regarding worker health and safety and the environment."
Ships from rich countries are traditionally sent to nations like India, where small operators rip the vessels apart on beaches to collect reusable steel from the hulls.
There were calls for reform several years ago after revelations that workers were routinely hurt in accidents and exposed to toxic chemicals, which also damaged the environment.
The industry has been tough to control. When India tightened the rules on the ships it would dismantle, part of its market migrated to neighboring Bangladesh.
An estimated 4,000 ships around the world need to be recycled every year, and that number is only expected to increase as regulations requiring double-hulled oil tankers send fleets of single-hulled tankers to scrap.
"We are not trying to prevent developing countries from receiving clean raw materials," said Greenpeace campaigner Marietta Harjono. "However it is unacceptable that poor countries become the toxic waste handlers for the rich." Associated Press