Ships are living
creatures. Ask any sailor and he will agree and he will further say that
ships are feminine. That combination of steel, paint, oil, blood, sweat,
tears, sand, sea, wind and waves can be nothing but feminine. But unlike
ladies, when ships reach the end of their lives, they are treated rather
brutally. They are driven up dirty, oily beaches, and then are ripped
apart unceremoniously till the only sign that a living breathing ship
ever existed would be some oil stained patches of sand and a heap of
unidentifiable steel pieces. The process of recycling a ship in the
countries such as India, Bangladesh, China etc. has been highlighted in
the western media. For us poor innocents who saw those videos and
photographs that entire process looks horrifyingly like the
personification of Dante’s hell. So I went poking around.
First of all, you think I
am exaggerating? I am not. Here, take a look at some of these links on
this ship breaking industry.
See that I mean by Dante’s hell? Naked feet treading over hot oily sand,
breathing in noxious fumes, no safety equipment, clearly devastated
ships, fires and sparks around the place, dark eyes and mud, earnings in
the bottom layers and garbage pickers. It is indeed a hell on earth.
But, according to some estimates, there are more than a million people
across the world directly engaged in ship breaking. Almost 200,000 in
Bangladesh itself.
And for very poor people in poor countries such as India, China,
Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc., the fact that they have employment is
important. It will make the difference between starvation and existing.
But this thought seems to have passed people by. When people get shocked
at the sight, think about why ships are not being broken up in the USA,
UK, Japan, Greece or the shores of Italy? Well, we in the west have put
in so many rules, regulations, laws, notifications and ordinances that
recycling equipment is simply not cost effective to break up ships here
especially when you have lower cost locations available. You have to
wear special shoes, wear a gas mask, worry about decontamination of the
ground and so on and so forth. And if you lose your job, you will always
have a welfare cheque or you can move to another job.
But there are no such human health and safety or environmental
requirements in Alang in Gujarat in India or in Chittagong in
Bangladesh. And still people are glad to have those jobs. If you put in
those requirements for gas masks and decontamination in Chittagong, then
you know what will happen? The ships will go to Sierra Leone to be
broken up. The 200,000 people in Bangladesh will starve because as you
know, jobs or welfare cheques are not really that readily available
there. So while you blanch at the nightmarish conditions, do look at the
smiles on the faces as well, they are doing honest jobs which the west
has made it uneconomic to do in their own lands. But here is the
Greenpeace site, quite an
interesting site to read. The judgement call to judge employment versus
environment protection is very difficult to read and make. Not an easy
one at all.
There is an international convention which bars
the transfer of hazardous waste between countries. The full name is,
Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous
Wastes and their Disposal. Quite a mouthful, eh? It was setup in 1992
and almost 170 countries have signed up to this declaration but it does
not seem to be stopping the trade very much. An example of a successful
usage of this convention to stop a dirty ship from landing on the shores
of Pakistan or India was the case of the scrapping of the French
aircraft carrier Clemenceau in 2006.
After a huge global protest campaign by Greenpeace who protested against
the French violating the Basel Convention, the French decided not to
send the ship to India to be broken up and the poor ship is currently
tied up at the Naval port of Brest, gently rusting away. Quite a big
victory, eh? It would have been if at exactly the same time, several
other ships loaded with asbestos would not have been in the process of
being broken up in Alang, India. And if no more French ships loaded with
asbestos had landed in India. Or if Greenpeace had continued to campaign
to make sure no more asbestos laden ships landed in Alang. But life goes
on. An indication of the importance of this subject to
Greenpeace can be
seen at their main site for
ship breaking. Notice the last date of update? It is early 2006. I
suppose the camera’s and reporters have gone away but the laborers who
are breaking the ships are still there.
The other main reason for scrapping in these countries is that they
provide good quality steel at rock bottom prices. Bangladesh is
notoriously lacking in raw commodity materials and by some estimates,
this ship breaking industry provides up to 90% of the iron and steel
usage in the country. Similarly, other countries utilize scrap steel in
their domestic iron and steel industry. Have you sent the prices of
steel recently? They have gone up through the roof. The Global Carbon
Steel Composite Index has gone from 138.3 in February 2006 to 217 in
March 2008. So for the poor countries that have to purchase steel, it
makes more sense for them to get it in this way.
The European Union and the International Maritime Organization seem to
be working up the courage to implement a convention on doing
pre-cleaning of the hazardous materials on the ships before they end up
on the breakers beach and ship breaking in general. These hazardous
materials are really bad, such as asbestos, dioxins, oil, chemicals, you
name it. Now this is a very tricky area. And will be very difficult to
implement. Who pays for the clean-up? Does the last owner of the ship
pay for it? Does the owner of the last cargo on that ship pay for it?
Who will enforce the ruling? Do you enforce the ruling where the ship
has been tied up at the last port of call? Or where the ship has been
registered? (Can you imagine a country like Liberia or Sierra Leone
taking action?).
Or do you make sure that every cargo owner pays some element of the
cargo fees aside for eventual cleanup? And if the fees are not paid,
then where is the money to clean up going to come from? General
taxation? Which general taxation? Do you wish this to be paid out of EU
funds? Or national funds? If so, why would say Luxembourg have to pay
for clean up of ships while it is totally landlocked? Who will enforce
it? Do you change the penalties by size of the ship or by the cargo
capacity of the ship? There are quite a lot of questions to be answered,
but seems like some form of a convention will emerge and very slowly,
with loads of holes and exclusions, take shape. Then countries will sign
up slowly, the industry will shift its patterns, and over many decades
or so, get to a stage where a global standard has been agreed,
implemented, operationalized and policed. Long way to go yet. If you
think I am joking, head over to the International Labor Organization
website and see the conventions they have written, the number of parties
who have signed up and then look around to see if that has made much of
a difference, these things take time.
I love ships, I adore their shapes and I love their behavior. They are
definitely human to me and could be the inner sailor in me speaking.
They are definitely contrary, need to be handled very gently and
carefully and very expensive to run. So much so that Admiral Chester
Nimitz said, "A ship is always referred to as 'she' because it costs so
much to keep one in paint and powder." Ships talk and murmur. Seriously,
they do. Listen to them and you can listen to them talking, murmuring,
creaking, screeching and whining. Not on those cruise ships, they are
not ships, they are gaudy ornaments, sound proofed and carpeted all
over. But a warship, a tanker, a container ship, a cargo vessel, serious
vessels, who treat the sea warily and with respect, they talk to you.
Docks talk about ships taking birth in yards, joy you feel when the ship
hits the water in the rush. It is very much like a human birth. Signing
of the contract, the bringing together of men, materials and money in a
womb like yard and the final birth as the ship rushes down and splashes
into the water to be finally born. When a ship sinks and dies, it cries.
Submariners who have torpedoed ships frequently talk about the sadness
they feel when the ship dies. They talk about the haunting ship’s death
groans when they hear the crumpling of the ships hull as it sinks down
to the ocean depths.
But perhaps that is indeed the right grave for ships, the ocean depths.
To be driven up a beach and then stripped naked, all the hull and steel
cut away with flame torches, all the furniture and fittings unscrewed
and unbolted, the oil drained away, till nothing is left but a patch of
oil stained sand is somehow very distressing. But perhaps the fact that
in the ship’s death, she has given back something to the humans who
built and rode her while she was alive, makes the manner of her death
worthwhile.
All
this to be taken with a grain of salt!
March 31,
2008
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