Archiv – China | The International Maritime Organization (IMO) began a diplomatic conference in Hong Kong on Monday to discuss the draft text of a new international convention on ship recycling.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, IMO Secretary-General Efthimios Mitropoulos said the draft International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships was expected to be adopted by member states and regions of the IMO at the end of the five-day conference.China | The International Maritime Organization (IMO) began a diplomatic conference in Hong Kong on Monday to discuss the draft text of a new international convention on ship recycling.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, IMO Secretary-General Efthimios Mitropoulos said the draft International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships was expected to be adopted by member states and regions of the IMO at the end of the five-day conference.
The draft convention proposed a set of guidelines and legally binding measures on the ship breaking industry “with the aim of ensuring that ships, when recycled, do not pose any unnecessary risk to human health, the safety of workers in the industry or the environment,” Mitropoulos said.
Such an effort called for collective action and responsibility and, when adopted, would add to the wide range of IMO measures to prevent and control marine and atmospheric pollution caused by ships and mitigate the damaging effects that might result from maritime operations, he added.
The draft text came after years of discussion and preparatory work by the organizers and member states and was close to success. The IMO had previously come up with a set of guidelines on ship recycling in late 2003.
While it creates many jobs, ship recycling poses environmental and health challenges due to certain harmful substances typically used in ship building.
There has been a resurgence of ship recycling amid the current economic downturn, as fleets of cargo ships lay idle due to weak demands, Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region said at the opening ceremony of the conference.
The design of the new convention that includes guidelines on ship breaking served the two key purposes of helping protect the health of workers in recycling yards and reducing damage to the environment.
“Also, new guidelines on ship recycling will alter the design, construction, operation and preparation of ships to facilitate safer and more environmentally sound recycling,” Tsang said.
Hong Kong, one of the world’s top five registers currently with a gross tonnage of over 40 million, will play its part in implementing the implementation of the measures and requirements in the new convention, he added.
With some 500 representatives and guests, the IMO diplomatic conference is the first of its kind in Asia. It was little affected by the threat of the influenza A/H1N1, as health authorities had successfully contained the spread of the virus after the first confirmed case in the city and the threat of virus itself seemed to be weaker than first expected.
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