Friday, February 03, 2023

ECOCIDE
Brazil Says It’s Started Sinking an Old Warship, Hazardous Material and All

The navy said it had begun an operation to send the aircraft carrier São Paulo to the bottom.


São Paulo in the Atlantic off Rio de Janeiro in 2011. Once the flagship of the Brazilian Navy, it had not seen active service in roughly a decade.
Credit...Brazilian Navy, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Manuela Andreoni
Feb. 3, 2023

RIO DE JANEIRO — The Brazilian Navy said on Friday evening it had begun an operation to sink the decommissioned aircraft carrier São Paulo, packed with an undetermined amount of asbestos and other toxic materials, about 220 miles off the country’s northeastern coast.

A navy news release did not give details of the operation, and it was not clear whether the ship had gone down. Naval officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The carrier had spent months at sea, refused permission to dock back in Brazil after plans to recycle the ship in Turkey collapsed. Environmental groups accused Brazilian officials and the company that owned the ship of underreporting the amount of hazardous material aboard. Under pressure from environmental groups, Turkey canceled permission for São Paulo to dock after the ship and its tug had already reached Gibraltar.

The vessel, by then in need of maintenance, was forced to head back to Brazil, where it was similarly refused permission to dock by civilian officials. The navy, for unexplained reasons, also refused to offer its bases. So the ship spent months being towed in circles as its condition deteriorated.

A navy news release this week warned of “deteriorating hull buoyancy conditions and the inevitability of spontaneous/uncontrolled sinking.”

Officials had said earlier that the 30,000-ton carrier would be sunk off Pernambuco State at a spot about three miles deep, outside any environmentally protected zones or areas with undersea cables.


A Proud Ship Turned Into a Giant Recycling Problem. So Brazil Plans to Sink It.
Feb. 2, 2023


In the last decade, according to the Shipbreaking Platform, a watchdog organization that advocates for sustainable recycling, Brazilian companies have disposed of more than 50 vessels in South Asia, where regulations for handling toxic materials are lax.

“Several of these vessels were exported from Brazilian ports without following the international rules on trans-boundary movements of hazardous waste,” said Nicola Mulinaris, a policy adviser at Shipbreaking Platform.

The plan to recycle São Paulo in Turkey was thought to be Brazil’s first effort to scrap a ship under well-regulated conditions.

The toxic material aboard São Paulo could disrupt ecosystems, kill animals and plants and poison marine food chains with heavy metals, according to IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency.

Rosângela Muniz, the interim director of IBAMA’s environmental quality department, said the agency had asked the navy for information, including the method that would be used to sink the ship, so it could help mitigate the impact. There had been no response by the end of business on Friday.

Ms. Muniz said her team was frustrated that the effort to recycle São Paulo sustainably had failed.

“This ship is an environmental liability that has only one correct destination: recycling,” she said. “We know there will be other requests like this one that will get to IBAMA, and we hope they will have an outcome that is better for the environment.”

Manuela Andreoni is a writer for the Climate Forward newsletter, currently based in Brazil. She was previously a fellow at the Rainforest Investigations Network, where she examined the forces that drive deforestation in the Amazon. @manuelaandreoni

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 4, 2023, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Brazil Plans to Sink Warship Packed With Toxic Materials.
 


Brazil sinks aircraft carrier in Atlantic despite pollution risk

Critics of Brazil’s planned sinking of the decommissioned Sao Paulo aircraft carrier described it as a ‘state-sponsored environmental crime’.

A photo taken in 1994 shows the then-French aircraft carrier 'Foch' in the Adriatic Sea. Renamed 'Sao Paulo' when bought by Brazil in 2000, the ageing and decommissioned aircraft carrier was sunk on Friday February 3, 2023 in the Atlantic Ocean, Brazil's Navy said [File/AFP]

Published On 4 Feb 2023

Brazil has sunk a decommissioned aircraft carrier in the Atlantic Ocean despite concerns expressed by environmental groups that the ageing warship was packed with toxic materials.

The “planned and controlled sinking occurred late in the afternoon” on Friday, some 350 km (220 miles) off the Brazilian coast in the Atlantic Ocean, in an area with an “approximate depth of 5,000 meters [16,000 feet]”, Brazil’s Navy said in a statement.

The decision to scuttle the six-decade-old aircraft carrier “Sao Paulo” came after Brazilian authorities had tried in vain to find a port willing to welcome the vessel.

Though defence officials said they would sink the vessel in the “safest area”, environmentalists attacked the decision, saying the warship contained tonnes of asbestos, heavy metals and other toxic materials that could leach into the water and pollute the marine food chain.

The Basel Action Network had called on newly-elected Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva -who took office last month pledging to reverse surging environmental destruction under far-right ex-President Jair Bolsonaro – to immediately halt the “dangerous” plan to scuttle the ship.

The NGO Shipbreaking Platform – a coalition of environmental, labour and human rights organisations – had described Brazil’s planned sinking of the Sao Paulo as potentially a “state-sponsored environmental crime”.
Built in the late 1950s in France, whose navy sailed the aircraft carrier for 37 years as the Foch, the warship had earned a place in 20th-century naval history. The Sao Paulo took part in France’s first nuclear tests in the Pacific in the 1960s and saw deployments in Africa, the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia from the 1970s to 1990s.

Brazil bought the 266-metre (873ft) aircraft carrier for $12 million in 2000. A fire that broke out on board the ship in 2005 accelerated the vessel’s decline.

Last year, Brazil authorised Turkish firm Sok Denizcilik to dismantle the Sao Paulo for scrap metal. But in August, just as a tugboat was about to tow it into the Mediterranean Sea, Turkish environmental authorities blocked the plan.

Brazil’s defence ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that the dismantling plan for the ship “represented an unprecedented attempt” by Brazil to safely dispose of the ship through “environmentally sound recycling”.

Brazil then brought the aircraft carrier back home but did not allow it into port, citing the “high risk” to the environment.

According to the defence ministry statement, the area selected for the sinking was identified by the Navy’s Hydrography Centre, which considered it the “safest” location as it was outside Brazil’s exclusive economic zone, environmental protection areas, free from documented submarine cable and was at a depth greater than 3,000 metres (9,840ft).

“In view of the facts presented and the increasing risk involved in towing, due to the deterioration of the hull’s buoyancy conditions and the inevitability of spontaneous/uncontrolled sinking, it is not possible to adopt any other course of action other than jettisoning the hull, through of the planned and controlled sinking,” the ministry said.

AL JAZEERA


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