Ship Recycling provides a deep insight into the ship recycling industry, the people involved, the technology involved and the environmental as well as health concerns arising out of the industry practice. It is also a reference book for mariners, on the statistics, analysis, methodology of the ship recycling industry with special emphasis on the effect it has on national economy, revenues generated, employment potentials and the effect of contrasting regulation across international boundaries. The intervention of environmental groups, NGOs who voice their concerns are also mentioned. The impact of national and international bodies regulating the ship as a commodity makes the book a referee point and text material for all maritime interests.

Ship recycling conserves resources, employs an unskilled workforce, and removes outdated tonnage. Operating mainly on the Indian subcontinent, this ‘primitive’ industry often results in loss of human life and pollution of the marine environment. Despite moral indignation, the international community has struggled to manage this industry and only recently completed the IMO International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships. Using the Indian experience on shipbreaking as a case study, this book assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the Convention. The author argues that the Convention may not succeed because it fails to strike a balance between environmental protection, human rights, and commercial realities. The book offers recommendations for a holistic and integrated approach to a sustainable ship recycling industry.

This book analyses the contribution of the IMO International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships to sustainable ship recycling against the backdrop of present practices and third world approaches to sustainable development.

Asbestos, explosives, and chemical waste are only a few of the hazards involved in the meticulous work of destroying a giant ship. When new labor laws and environmental standards came to Europe, the ship-breaking industry moved to places like Chittagong on the coast of Bangladesh-places where the lives of workers seem expendable, and the environment is someone else's problem. follows the demise of the Asian Tiger, a ship destroyed at one of the twenty ship-breaking yards along the beaches of Chittagong. BBC Bangladesh correspondent Roland Buerk takes us through the process-from beaching the vessel to its final dissemination, from wealthy shipyard owners to poverty-stricken ship cutters, and from the economic benefits for Bangladesh to the pollution of its once pristine beaches.

This study provides an in-depth analysis of the Hong Kong Ship Recycling Convention as adopted in May 2009 and a thorough analysis of the overall status quo of ship recycling regulations. It investigates the lack of sufficient ratifications of the Convention from both a legal and an economic perspective. The first part of the study focuses on the history of the Convention’s entry-into-force provision and the rationale behind it. Due to the fact that this provision provides a considerable additional obstacle to the Convention’s becoming legally binding, in the second part the focus of the work shifts to unilateral action in this field. An overview of the legal environment of European ship recycling legislation is followed by an analysis and evaluation of a number of proposals by the European Commission attempting to tackle the problems of current ship recycling procedures. With a particular emphasis on (planned) European measures in this regard, the analysis’ overall message is one of cautious optimism.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. In this authoritative book, Ioanna Hadjiyianni and Kleoniki Pouikli incisively map out the regulatory landscape of ship recycling, exploring the main international and European regulatory approaches that govern its environmental impacts. In light of the transnational demands of environmental justice, they critically assess the interaction between multiple regimes from the perspective of key environmental principles and the EU’s attempts to steer regulatory developments in this field.