Recycling of Ships - Prevention of Pollution of the Marine Environment from Vessels - page 96

characteristic regional features, the economic capacity of developing States and
their need for economic development ”. 112 Shipbreaking in Asian developing coun-
tries is undoubtedly a land-based activity. 113 Moreover, the majority of the adverse
environmental impact of these recycling facilities is limited to the jurisdiction of the
respective coastal states with little, if any, transboundary impact. 114 So in
establishing global rules that would be applicable to the shipbreaking industries of
the developing countries, all parties should consider the economic capacity of the
developing countries and their need for economic development.
In the future, development of the international legal regime for ensuring safe and
environmentally-sound disposal of obsolete ships, the IMO and representatives from
both developed and developing countries must consider other key principles of
international environmental law that are not currently reflected adequately in the
Convention, including: the polluter-pays principle; the principle of preventive action;
the precautionary principle; and the principle of sustainable development. Finally,
LDCs inalienable right to development should not be harmed in any way by the

Convention, because those countries are very much dependent on shipbreaking
industries for its reconstruction and development activities.
If the proponents of the Convention fail to address these issues, the newly-
adopted Convention may not be successful in the developing shipbreaking coun-
tries. At the eighth conference of parties to the Basel Convention (“CoP 8”), the
Indian representatives stated that “they did not support the development of an IMO
Convention”. 115 In this meeting India and other shipbreaking countries seriously
criticised the Convention for not having any clear commitment to provide funds to
developing countries as well as for the failure to provide an adequate mechanism
for pre-cleaning of ships. 116 Ultimately the CoP 8 adopted the following decision:
The Conference of the Parties . . . [i]nvites the International Maritime Organisation to
further consider incorporating clear responsibilities of all stakeholders in ship recycling,
including ship owners, ship recycling facilities, flag States and ship recycling States, also
taking into account their current capacity and the common but differentiated responsibil-
ities and sovereign rights of the Parties . 117

'

112 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, opened for signature 10 December 1982,
1833 UNTS 3 (entered into force 16 November 1994 (hereinafter UNCLOS).art. 207(4)) (empha-
sis added). Although the UNCLOS specifically recognised the ' differentiated treatment ' principle
in case of pollution from land based sources, it does not differentiate between the ships of
developed and developing countries in articles 211 and 212, which deal with vessel-source
pollution and pollution from or through the atmosphere. UNCLOS arts. 211 and 212.
113

Royal Institution of Naval Architects, Conference on Recycling of Ships & Other Marine
Structures, Recycling is a Shore Based Industry (4-5 May 2005) (prepared by Chowdhury
FR) p. 15.
114

Ibid, p. 16.
115 BAN, Basel Action Network Report and Press Statements on the Results of the Eighth
Conference of the Parties of the Basel Convention, http://www.ban.org/cop8/COP8BANReport.
pdf , last accessed on 13 July 2014.
116 Ibid, p. 6.
117 Decision VIII/11: Environmentally Sound Management of Ship Dismantling, para. 5 (emphasis
added).