> ‘There’s also the Basel Convention, which is on the trans-boundary movements of hazardous wastes, such as end-of-life vessels.’ The problem is that a vessel only counts as hazardous waste once the company announces its intention to dispose of it. ‘It’s very easy for ship owners to simply claim that they’re on an operational voyage, sail all the way to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and only then declare that the vessel is actually heading for scrap. It makes it impossible to enforce that piece of law.
Any long-term commitments can be potentially worked around via bankrupcy. As long as we allow companies to take the full responsibility for consequences of their actions, and completely absolve their owners, the system will not work that great.
I'm sure you could just contrive an accidental sinking, or even better have the ship taken by "pirates" who happen to leave some cash in the lifeboats with the dispossessed.
Seems like you'd have to just outright ban selling it to foreign owners?
Otherwise someone will make a "legitimate" business in a country that doesn't ban selling to (non-compliant) scrappers, whose job in life is to purchase old ships and sell them to scrappers. Maybe hanging on to them for a bit first to make it slightly less blatant...
> ‘There’s also the Basel Convention, which is on the trans-boundary movements of hazardous wastes, such as end-of-life vessels.’ The problem is that a vessel only counts as hazardous waste once the company announces its intention to dispose of it. ‘It’s very easy for ship owners to simply claim that they’re on an operational voyage, sail all the way to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and only then declare that the vessel is actually heading for scrap. It makes it impossible to enforce that piece of law.