Bangladesh: Environment directorate to issue clearance for scrapped ship

The environment directorate will issue environment clearance for ships imported for scrapping, the High Court has ruled. The exporting country will confirm if the ship is detoxified. The maritime transport directorate's director general will give the clearance for the ships to enter Bangladesh waters after examining the detoxification and environmental certificates.
The bench of justices Md Iman Ali and Obaidul Hasan issued the directives on Tuesday in response to a petition by Bangladesh Environment Lawyers Association (BELA).
The commerce ministry amended the Import Policy Order (2009-12) for scrap ships on Apr 8.
According to the amendment, the exporters of the ship were to issue detoxification and environmental clearance instead of the exporting country's government or its authorised organisation.
It also said that the environment will review the certificates.
Prior to the amendment, the exporting country's government or its authorised organisation could issue the clearance.
The court also asked the maritime transport directorate to take administrative step against assistant chemist Fauzia for misinterpreting the High Court verdict on ship breaking delivered on Mar 17 last year, and inform it within two months.
The assistant chemist while noting the order made an error and said that clearance would only be required for toxic ships on the Greenpeace list before entering Bangladesh for scrapping.
The court also alleged that following her wrong explanation, 172 ships entered Bangladesh from the date of the order. Accidents in those ships caused 24 deaths.
It also said that the order, in fact, demanded clearances for all ships entering Bangladesh for scrapping, not only toxic ships enlisted with Greenpeace.
The court also expressed concern at the sudden hike of the number of ship-breaking yards to 88 from 36 since the previous court order.
Acting on a writ petition by BELA, the court last year ordered that no ships for scrapping can enter the country without detoxification at the exporting country.
On March 8, the court ordered the Department of Shipping to submit within Mar 18 relevant documents, including no-objection certificate, release note, detoxification certificate and letter of credit of all scrap ships imported into the country from March 17, 2009.
It also ordered shutdown of all shipyards without environmental clearance.
Thirty percent of the world's condemned ships are recycled in Bangladesh, and the ship-breaking industry creates tens of thousands of jobs and provides three-quarters of the country's steel -- but at a serious environmental cost.
More than 40,000 big trees were felled in the last six months to clear the way for new ship-breaking yards, according to Mohammad Ali Shaheen, the Bangladesh head of the Platform on Ship-breaking lobby group.
He recently told an international news agency that not only are the yards dumping toxic waste on the coast, they are also clearing forests that have been painstakingly planted and nurtured to work as natural barriers to cyclones.
Bangladesh is on the frontline of climate change and rampant deforestation, particularly by ship-breaking yards, is making things worse.
In the past five years, Bangladesh has been hit by two cyclones which left 5,000 people dead, displaced millions and caused three billion dollars worth of damage.
There is now hardly any forest left along a more than 20-kilometre (12-mile) stretch of Sitakundu coast, said professor Mohammad Kamal Hossain, a forestry expert at Chittagong University.
"The ship-breakers have gobbled up most of the plantations, showing scant regard to the government's environmental laws."
Felling old growth forests is illegal in Bangladesh but laws are not enforced as ship-breaking is a billion dollar industry and yards owners are some of the country's top business tycoons, he said.
Ships broken up in Bangladesh also routinely contain materials like asbestos, banned in many countries.
The government's recent attempt to impose strict environmental standards on the industry ended with an about-face within three months after devastating strikes threatened the country's steel industry.
The proposed law, which required ships to be certified by the selling nation's environmental authorities, was amended to allow yards to bring in ships on their own declarations that the vessels are free from toxic materials.
But the 100 shipyards in Bangladesh -- up from just 36 in 2008, with all the new arrivals on the Sitakundu coast -- are damaging the environment in more ways than just through these toxic chemicals.