My meeting with Rizwana Hasan is a remarkable testament to the global interconnectedness that characterizes our contemporary lives. Hasan, who is associated with the Eugene-based Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW,) was in town as an invited keynote speaker for the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC).
Rizwana Hasan has a lengthy track record as an activist environmental attorney in Bangladesh, and in 2009, was one of the recipients of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.
Hasan focuses on the ship-breaking industry’s impacts on humans and the environment. Ships are sent to the junkyard after two or three decades of useful service, similar to how we condemn used cars. There is a lot to salvage and reuse from these retired ships—from engines and compasses to furniture to cranes, and not to forget the steel and wood. Ship-breaking, as one can therefore imagine, is labor-intensive.
Often, this also means that laborers toil away in conditions that can be quite dangerous and dirty. The occupational and environmental problems related to ship-breaking arise because of the wide range of materials that are used to build a ship in the first place.
South Korea and Taiwan used to be the global leaders in ship-breaking. But then they developed and became rich, which then sent the industry towards other low cost locations. Thus, the labor-intensive nature along with potential for unfavorable impacts on workers and the natural environment logically leads this activity to be situated at the docks of poor countries. Alang, situated on India’s western coast, and relatively close to Mumbai, is home to one of the largest ship-breaking operations where a bulk freighter is completely dismantled in about a month. Karachi is Pakistan’s headquarters in this industry, and in Bangladesh it all happens at Chittagong.
This is now boom time for ship-breaking because the Great Recession has idled many ships, and a record number of the older ones are now headed to these maritime graveyards. According to news reports, in 2009, scrappers “bought 1,014 ships with a combined carrying capacity of 31.5 million deadweight tons” which was twice the 2008 numbers.
Rizwana Hasan is not opposed to the ship-breaking industry per se. But, she wants the ships' owners and their countries of origin to properly take care of toxic materials before the vessels reach Bangladesh. Further, Hasan worries—and she has enough evidence for this—that while Bangladesh and other countries might have laws that address labor conditions and environmental impacts, rare is the case when such laws are actually applied.
Thus, starting in 2003, Hasan has brought these issues to the attention of Bangladesh’s Supreme Court and has been gaining victories for nature and the laborers. Last year, the court closed down 36 ship-breaking yards that were not in compliance with the environmental laws. A remarkable success, indeed, for Hasan and her team.
In 1971 Bangladesh came into existence, after having been East Pakistan since 1947 when the British Raj ended. I told Hasan about the comic books I had read as a kid that told the story of Mujib—as he is popularly referred to—and his fight for Bangladesh’s freedom. In a horrific re-telling of Julius Caesar’s death, in 1975, Mujibur Rahman, along with most of his family, was assassinated by his associates. Two of his daughters survived only because they were away in Germany—one of them is the current prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina.
Rizwana Hasan noted that it took 35 years for the justice system to even try the assassins and, therefore, it should not surprise anybody that environmental justice is not easy to pursue in Bangladesh. It is simply incredible that Hasan continues to maintain a positive and constructive outlook despite such a bleak and realistic assessment of Bangladesh’s politics and the courts.
And, it is even more incredible that I met with Rizwana Hasan right here in Eugene!
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