CHIRAC RECALLS FRENCH SHIP FROM INDIA, ORDERS INVESTIGATION

French President Jacques Chirac on 15 February ordered the return of French ship Clemenceau back to domestic waters, citing concerns regarding the hazardous waste contents of the vessel that had been sent to India for dismantling. The move came moments after the French Conseil d'Etat, the Supreme Court of France, cancelled the export documents of the ship on the grounds that it contained more asbestos than previously thought and that it fell under EU and international laws on industrial waste. The Clemenceau has been accused of carrying hazardous materials, in particular asbestos, that were not removed before its 31 December departure from France.

The decision to repatriate the vessel was taken after the Indian Supreme Court on 13 February decided to create a new panel consisting of retired navy officers and other specialists to investigate whether the former aircraft carrier should be allowed to enter the country in order to be broken at the Alang scrapping yard in Western Gujarat. The Supreme Court's Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Wastes had previously returned a split verdict on the issue, with seven members in favour of accepting the ship under strict conditions and three others recommending its return to France.

The Clemenceau has now embarked on a three-month return trip to the French naval base in the port town of Brest in Brittany "at least for a period of time" until a solution is found to its disposal. President Chirac has also ordered an inquiry into how much carcinogenic asbestos the vessel contained -- one of the main areas of contention between the government and environmental groups -- after opposition politicians described the affair as a "fiasco" which had exposed the country to "international ridicule".

Background

French authorities have said that their original assessment of the asbestos on board the ship, which being prepared for disposal, had indicated that 160 tonnes of brittle asbestos was present. As a result, the ship was sent to French scrap firm Technopure, which reported to the French government that it had removed 115 tonnes of asbestos, leaving 45 tonnes on board to make the ship seaworthy for its final voyage to India. However, the French Defence Ministry said on 11 February that it only had documentation of receipt of 85 tonnes of asbestos at the landfill charged with disposal of the removed waste. As a result, there are questions about whether the full 115 tonnes were taken out of the ship, or whether 30 tonnes remain in the Clemenceau on top of the 45 tonnes that were deliberately left on board. In addition, Greenpeace and ecologists suggest that it is possible that there is more asbestos on board than was identified during the preliminary assessment, such that the true amount of asbestos on board the ship could be as much as 500 tonnes.

It is also possible that other hazardous substances are on board the ship. Although the French government told Indian authorities that there were no polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) on board, they did not present any proof of an assessment or test of any non-asbestos chemicals. The French, for their part, suggest that apart from the 45 tonnes of asbestos the ship carries no other hazardous materials. However, the Basel Action Network (BAN), a non-governmental organisation, points to a US ship of similar size and function as the Clemenceau in which hazardous materials were found and, using the ratio of sizes of the two vessels, suggests that the Clemenceau is likely to have PCB contaminated material above 50 ppm in solid matrix form in a range between 744 and 823 tonnes.

BAN also suggested that the transfer of the ship to India violated the Basel Convention as the treaty's signatories are forbidden to undertake transboundary shipments of hazardous waste without assurances that the destination facility is engaged in environmentally sound management as defined in the Convention. The NGO suggested that it is "internationally recognised" that "the ship-breaking yards in Alang do not constitute environmentally sound management as required under the Convention." However, the Gujarat Maritime Board, which manages the Alang ship-breaking yard, says the workers are trained to handle the ship's toxic waste.

French investigation launched

In addition to forming its own panel to determine whether the Clemenceau could be scrapped in India, the Indian Supreme Court asked the French Ministry of Defence to investigate the quantity of hazardous substances that remain on board the ship. In response, French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said on 14 February that it had ordered the state prosecutor to conduct an inquiry into Technopure's asbestos-stripping of the warship, and in particular the discrepancy between the amount of asbestos that Technopure claims to have removed from the vessel and the weight recorded at the landfill site. The investigation into the firm will complement the expert inquiry, announced by Chirac on 15 February, into the amount of asbestos currently on board.

The French moves come only days after a 5 February letter sent by EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas to French authorities asking for more information in order to determine whether there are grounds for launching a legal procedure for infringement of EU rules against transfer of hazardous waste outside of the OECD region. On 14 February, French government commissioner Yann Aguila said that the Clemenceau was dangerous waste and should not be broken down in India. A recent poll in France suggests that 68 percent of the population support the Clemenceau's return to France.

Governance gap at issue

The Basel Convention aims to minimise the generation of hazardous wastes and to control and reduce their transboundary movements in order to protect human health and the environment, and includes movements of asbestos and PCPs within its jurisdiction. The EU (including France) is a Party to the Convention, and has signed and put into law an amendment to the Convention that bans shipment of hazardous wastes from OECD countries to developing countries. However, this law and the Basel Convention itself do not cover movements of ships, which are under the jurisdiction of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), or labour conditions in ships and ship-breaking yards, which are under the jurisdiction of the International Labour Organization (ILO). There is, therefore, a 'gap' or 'grey zone' between the three instruments in terms of which has jurisdiction over ship scrapping. Although the Assembly of the IMO in July 2005 adopted a resolution on the development of a legally binding instrument on ship recycling, which would likely cover ship scrapping, negotiations have not yet begun and as such there is no current instrument specific to the issue.

The root question in the Clemenceau case is thus whether it falls under IMO jurisdiction as a ship, in which case France would be in compliance with EU and international law by sending it to India, or whether it falls under the Basel Convention insofar as it contains asbestos and perhaps other hazardous wastes, in which case it would be incompliant with the Convention's rules on advanced informed agreement to the transfer, assessment and the amendment's ban on shipments to developing countries. Dialogue between the three Conventions on the issue has been ongoing through a joint working group that met in December 2005 and will meet again in April 2006. However, the 15 February decision of the French Conseil d'Etat ruled that the Clemenceau was not a warship under the jurisdiction of the IMO, and that it was instead hazardous waste as defined by the Basel Convention. In his statement, Chirac called on France's European partners to encourage the development of international norms on the transboundary movements of ships for dismantling that guarantee respect for social rights, working conditions and the environment.

Employment implications in question

Labourers in the Alang shipping yard criticised the French decision to recall the ship, noting that they were in need of work. "If there was a ship, we would have work. Otherwise there is no work," said Rammurat Sahani, a worker in the area. "All these foreign organisations, who have focussed the spotlight on Alang, are painting a negative picture of it abroad. Because of that, all the big companies will now sell their ships to Bangladesh, Pakistan and China," said Haresh Parmar, another worker. However, Greenpeace hailed the decision, calling it a victory for workers and their health, while some Indian port officials in the region suggested that the decreased levels of work in the Alang yards is a long-term trend that is unlikely to be changed by the presence of the Clemenceau.

The members of the new Indian Supreme Court sub-committee on the matter are expected to be announced 17 February, and the results of its investigation -- along with the French inquiries -- will determine the final resting-place of the Clemenceau.

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