Demandeur pays: The EU and funding improvements in South Asian ship recycling practices

Questionable practices for dismantling end-of-life ships or ‘ship recycling’ on South Asian countries’ shores have elicited unease given their dominance of this unevenly regulated global industry. International efforts to establish enforceable regulations have met with limited success so far, and yet this limited success may be further eroded as different interests promote their own preferred arrangements—or ignore them altogether. This paper focuses on narrowing differences between the European Union and South Asian ship recycling nations over regulating this trade by sequentially detailing its economic rationales, environmental regimes and relevant sustainability principles. These tasks performed, I deductively build a case for an aid-based, ‘demandeur pays’ approach to meaningfully address this impasse after considering other options to fund improved ship recycling practices in South Asia.