Tuesday, Jan 03, 2006
Opinion - News Analysis
A shipload of trouble from France http://www.hindu.com/2006/01/03/stories/2006010302660900.htm
Vaiju Naravane
Have the French authorities really removed all the asbestos they could have without damaging the structure of the ship or could more have been done?
[DEADLY GIFT: A November 19, 2004, file photo of workers aboard the former French aircraft carrier Georges Clemenceau at Toulon in southern France. The Clemenceau is now on its way to Alang in Gujarat. The placard at right reads: "Building site, No entrance to the public, asbestos decontamination." - PHOTO: AP]
FRANCE HAS sent India a New Year's "gift" in the shape of a 265-metre-long, decommissioned aircraft carrier, a gigantic, rusty, floating tub, denuded of men and equipment, and allegedly carrying an estimated 500 tonnes of deadly asbestos. It is a present India could clearly do without.
The French authorities and the SDIC, the private company that acquired the Clemenceau for scrap, deny these allegations saying the Clemenceau had an estimated 160 tonnes of asbestos aboard of which they have removed 115 tonnes.
The Clemenceau, once the flagship of the French Navy, set off for India on December 31, 2005 on its way to the knackers' yard at Alang in Gujarat, where it is to be dismantled. Once the ship has been dismantled (by Shree Ram Scrap Vessels Pvt. Ltd), it will yield 26,000 tonnes of steel valued at eight million Euros. But the path to that manna is potentially so dangerous for Indian workers and the environment and so strewn with unanswered questions that it may be wiser not to attempt it at all.
There are two types of arguments that militate against the Clemenceau coming to India to be broken up: moral and technical.
Since it was decommissioned in 1997, the ownership of the Clemenceau passed from the French Navy (which now has a merely custodial role) to the French state and naval officers have been keen on underlining that the decision to send the ship to India ultimately belonged to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. The Clemenceau will remain the property of the French state until its demolition is complete. Only then will the title deed be transferred to SDIC (Ship Decommissioning Industry Corporation), the Panamanian-registered private company that has acquired it. So, right up to the point of its demolition, the French state is involved and responsible for the fate of the Clemenceau and the toxic waste aboard.
France is a signatory to the Basel Convention of 1989, which bans the trans-boundary movement of hazardous wastes. The Convention defines wastes as "substances or objects which are disposed of or are intended to be disposed of or are required to be disposed of by the provisions of national law."
Commercial ship owners have tended to argue that an end-of-life ship, as long as it floats, even if clearly intended for demolition, does not constitute "waste." Under this pretext, several commercial ships, shot full of asbestos and other toxic industrial products, have ended up in the ship-breaking yards of India, Bangladesh, or China where they have been torn apart by workers, often without any kind of protective clothing or equipment, causing death, injury, and disease.
Legal challenges
The French Government has taken this argument one step further. In response to legal challenges from several anti-asbestos and ecologist associations contesting the Clemenceau's dispatch to India, the Government has argued that no civilian court within the country was competent to pass judgment on the Clemenceau since it was "a warship" and thus outside the purview of the court's jurisdiction.
France's stated case is that the Basel Convention regulations do no apply to "war material," a stand upheld by French courts. Asked to explain the difference between asbestos contained in a suitcase and asbestos contained in the empty hull of a decommissioned warship, (the export of asbestos per se is banned), a clearly discomfited French Admiral refused to reply, saying only that the courts in his country had ruled on the issue.
G. Thyagarajan, Chairman of the Supreme Court's Monitoring Committee, had this to say: "A warship is a container like any other. When it comes to the Basel Convention, it talks about toxic materials but does not specifically mention ships. My position is that there should be no import and no export of hazardous substances and no exceptions to that rule. We expect that countries belonging to the OECD such as France, who are signatories to the Basel Convention, have a moral responsibility to ensure that they do not allow anything containing hazardous materials to be sent to friendly countries."
Does sending the Clemenceau to India with toxic waste aboard constitute an unfriendly act? The Clemenceau has in the past been turned back by both Turkey and Greece which denied it entry in October and November 2003 respectively on the grounds that the ship had not been decontaminated. Although the ship has now been partially decontaminated it still contains at least 45 tonnes of asbestos on board, going by the Navy and SDIC's own extremely conservative estimate. Other sources, including the French company Technopure that removed 70 tonnes of asbestos from the ship, say the ship has been allowed to leave for India with huge quantities of asbestos (upwards of 500 tonnes) that could easily have been removed without damaging the ship's structure or navigability.
Complex case
As for the practical or technical aspects of this extremely complex case, there are several disquieting factors that emerge. The Clemenceau was contracted to be sold to SDIC, a private company, registered in Panama by Eckhardt Marine Gmbh, a wholly owned subsidiary of the German industrial giant Thyssen-Krup for a mere euros 100,000. Strangely enough, the signature of Briac Beilvert, the president of SDIC, appears under the title of both executor and guarantor in the contract for the acquisition of the ship. Also, since April 2005, Eckhardt Marine Gmbh no longer belongs to Thyssen-Krup, Mr. Beilvert having bought over the company from its owners.
The contract states that SDIC will carry out the decontamination of all directly visible, friable, and accessible asbestos without either dismantling the ship or affecting its structural integrity. This is where the contradictory claims and counterclaims about the exact amount of asbestos on board become relevant.
Christian Piotre, Deputy Chief of Staff of French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, in a letter dated February 11, 2005 addresses the concerns of the NGO Ban Asbestos: "... It is necessary to preserve the structure of the ship to allow its export to a demolition site. In practical terms, 90 per cent of the asbestos will be removed, the remainder, roughly 22 tonnes will be treated in India by the company Luthra Group under the supervision of Technopure, in charge of the decontamination in Toulon... "
Shree Ram Scrap Vessels Pvt. Ltd in its deposition before the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Waste on February 2, 2005 said that the French Government had promised to remove as much as 98 per cent of the asbestos on board the Clemenceau and that the company expected to find between 15 tonnes and 25 tonnes when the ship reached India, although that figure could vary slightly.
The Navy and SDIC now claim there is far less asbestos on board than the 220 tonnes indicated by the Defence Ministry letter. Technopure, the company which was in charge of the entire decontamination project, challenges that, saying at least 500 tonnes of asbestos remains on board and that a great deal more could have been removed such as 300 tonnes of cabling containing lead and asbestos, flooring with paint and glue containing asbestos, the ship's funnel, boilers and engines, etc.
The crux of the matter is: have the French authorities really removed all the asbestos they could have without damaging the structure of the ship or could more have been done? There is strong indication that the latter might be the case, since Technopure itself sent in two quotations, one for three million Euros for "minor" decontamination and another for six million Euros for "major" work. The fact that the cheaper option was retained indicates that the intention was to do a cheap cosmetic job leaving the major decontamination to Indian companies who would do it for a fraction of the cost.
When asked, SDIC refused to give a detailed inventory of the asbestos that remains on board. Luthra Group and Shree Ram Vessels Pvt. Ltd have yet to receive this detailed inventory.
Even presuming that Shree Ram Scrap Vessels Pvt. Ltd and the Luthra Group are capable of handling this extra tonnage of asbestos in a safe and scientific manner the question still remains as to why India should accept and bury such large quantities of toxic waste on its soil. Going by the "polluter pays" principle, should the extracted asbestos not be shipped back to the country of its origin?
The Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Waste, which meets on January 6, should look into all these disquieting aspects to prevent India from becoming an international garbage dump.
Copyright © 2006, The Hindu.