One of the convention’s principal architects Dr. Nicos Mikelis, who recently retired from IMO and who has closely monitored the recycling industry for several years, points out that improvements in the principal sub-continental recycling yards are already taking place, with “significant progress” being made in Indian facilities and both Turkey and China currently operating at standards that would more than fulfil the convention requirements.
The Government of Bangladesh, he notes, clearly believe that the industry is valuable to that country and are seeking to implement improvements. Dr. Mikelis firmly believes that the incremental improvements which the Hong Kong Convention promotes will be a considerable advance and hopes that it will be ratified as soon as possible.
Not surprisingly, even though the controversial scheme for levying all ships calling at European Ports for a recycling fund has disappeared, Brussels is still pressing ahead with its proposed legislation that would prevent EU flag ships from being recycled in yards where beaching is still practised, namely those yards within the Indian Sub-Continent. This week sees the latest stage in this effort, despite warnings from owners and their organisations that to ban beaching would effectively torpedo the convention, which so many interests worked so hard to develop. The Secretary-General of IMO is even travelling to Brussels to lend emphasis to the peril facing the convention, which risks becoming redundant before it ever comes into force.
The EU regards its initiatives, which will back the beaching ban with a range of ferocious financial penalties (which they suggest can be attached even to the penultimate owner of a ship), as a means of bringing forward the coming into force of the convention. Some have suggested it is unlikely to be in force before 2020, so the European Commission, wedded, above all, to the need to prevent beaching practices, are using their own tried and tested “accelerator” to force the pace.
The reality, it has been pointed out, should this week’s Brussels negotiations see this threat move to its next stage, will effectively shut down the links that have been made in Europe that are designed to help the sub-continental yards improve their safety and environmental records. The “rest of the world” will continue to send their ships to these yards without let or hindrance. Virtually all the incentives for promoting the convention will have gone and according to Dr. Mikelis, it will have become “inoperable”.
As for the European ban on beaching and the threats to penultimate owners, it is difficult to think of a more cogent reason to transfer the registration of whole fleets away from European registers. Throughout the whole saga over recycling, the would-be legislators seem to have remained ignorant of the processes and the economic drivers of recycling decision-making and the associated elements ashore in recycling countries. The Hong Kong Convention was an honest attempt by all sides to make matters better. It deserves more than to be killed off by political intransigence and environmental activism.