Pakistan joins ship recycling agreement

Shipping - Pakistan joins ship recycling agreement

Pakistan has joined the Hong Kong Convention, which will soon regulate globally standardized rules for environmental protection and occupational safety when recycling ships. This was announced by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London on Friday. Alongside Bangladesh and India, Pakistan is by far one of the three largest ship dismantling nations. Bangladesh and India have already joined the Hong Kong Convention.

In the EU, the scrapping of old ships is strictly regulated. These may only be recycled in certified facilities, which may also be located outside the EU. Globally applicable rules have been in place since 2009 - but so far only on paper, as the Hong Kong Convention will not come into force until June 26, 2025. This became possible because a sufficient number of countries only ratified the convention when Bangladesh and Liberia joined in the summer.

In Europe, Turkey is the focus of ship recycling. "In the other European countries, only small and medium-sized ships have been recycled so far," according to a study carried out for the German Maritime Center (DMZ). In Germany, there are no shipbreaking yards for decommissioned ships.

The international non-governmental organization Shipbreaking Platform has been denouncing for years that the scrapping of old and polluted ships repeatedly leads to environmental damage, human rights violations, child labour, illness and death. According to the IMO and shipowners' associations, this should improve significantly when the Hong Kong Convention comes into force.

With the climate-friendly conversion of shipping fleets, ship graveyards are likely to see unprecedented growth in the coming years. The Denmark-based international shipping association Bimco estimated this year that more than 15,000 ships with a carrying capacity of over 600 million tons are expected to be recycled in the next ten years, more than double the amount recycled in the previous ten years.

EU regulation on shipments of waste EU regulation on the recycling of ships IMO on Hong Kong Convention IMO communication of 1.12.