Principles of International Environmental Law with respect to Shipowners’ Environmental Costs in the Ship-Recycling Industry

Under the current international legal frameworks with respect to ship-recycling industry, relevant authorities are struggling from pursuing shipowners’ illegal trade of an end-of-life vessel to the shipbreaking yards, although it can be considered as a material fact to environmental harms caused by activities of ship-recycling. In this line, this paper will explore issues of circumvention by shipowners in relation to responsibility under the current international legal frameworks such as the Basel Convention and Hong Kong Convention. Based on examination of those conventions, this paper would find lack of effective control measures over shipowner’s transactions of end-of-life vessels to ship-breaking yards in South Asia through intermediaries under current international environmental law. Thus, to ensure responsibility of shipowners in relation to environmental harms in South Asian ship-breaking beaching yards, this paper examine principles of international environmental law including the polluter pays principle, and transboundary harm and liability principle. That is because environmental costs may be internalised by imposing liability on shipowners as the polluter in ship-recycling industry and also transboundary harm and its liability to a State may call concerned States more to be aware of shipowners’ activities of scrapping vessels.