Warship scuttled despite pollution concerns
BRAZIL on Friday sank a decommissioned aircraft carrier, the navy announced, despite environmental groups claiming the formerly French ship was packed with toxic materials.
The “planned and controlled sinking occurred late in the afternoon” on Friday, some 350km off the Brazilian coast in the Atlantic Ocean, in an area with an “approximate depth of 5 000m”, the navy said in a statement.
The decision to scuttle the sixdecade-old Sao Paulo, announced on Thursday, came after Brazilian authorities had tried in vain to find a port willing to welcome it.
Though defence officials said they would sink the vessel in the “safest area”, environmentalists criticised the decision, saying the aircraft carrier contains tons 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 Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – who took office last month vowing to reverse surging environmental destruction under far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro – to immediately halt the “dangerous” plan.
The group issued a joint statement with Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd on Friday, accusing Brazil of having violated “three international treaties” on the environment by sinking the
ship, which the NGOs said could cause “incalculable” damage to marine life and coastal communities.
Other “environmentally responsible measures could have been adopted, but once again, the importance of protecting the oceans, which are vital for the life of the planet, was treated with negligence”, said Leandro Ramos, director of programmes for Greenpeace Brazil.
The navy insisted it had chosen a spot for sinking that considered “the security of navigation and the environment” and “the mitigation of the impacts on public health, fishing
activities and ecosystems”.
A judge overruled a last-minute legal bid to stop the operation, saying in his decision that an unplanned sinking could be even worse for the environment or pose a danger to crews, the G1 news outlet reported.
Built in the late 1950s in France, whose navy sailed it for 37 years as the Foch, the aircraft carrier earned a place in 20th century naval history.
It took part in France’s first nuclear tests in the Pacific in the 1960s, and deployments in Africa, the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia from the 1970s to 1990s.