An international conference on toxic waste ended here Friday, failing to reach agreement on a proposal to require Basel Convention countries to set up eco-friendly ship dismantling facilities by 2012.
A draft document on the international convention on safe and environmentally sound recycling of ships proposed the need for all Basel countries to have equal standards for ship scrapping facilities.
Many developing countries, including Indonesia, said they were not ready to apply international standards to ship dismantling facilities due to poor capacity and lack of financial resources.
The proposal is likely to be resubmitted at the upcoming conference of the Basel Convention in 2010.
The Bali conference then called on the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to conduct a preliminary assessment of existing ship dismantling facilities across the world to determine current conditions.
Delegates from European countries were among members pushing for environmentally sound ship dismantling facilities to prevent the dumping of harmful materials from old vessels into the water.
This was among the crucial issues discussed at the five-day Bali conference.
Those pushing for the proposal fear poor countries will remain the main destinations for old ships scheduled for dismantling, making them vulnerable to chemical pollutants.
Indonesia said the delay in the proposal would be good for the country since most existing ship dismantling activities are carried out using traditional methods that fail to account for hazardous materials.
"If the standard was implemented now, up to 90 percent of ship dismantling activities would go bankrupt in Indonesia," the country's chief delegate to the conference, Agus Purnomo, said Friday.
"The same would also happen in other countries including India and Pakistan."
There are about 200 small shipyards across Indonesia that can be used to scrap oil ships.
Agus said that after a preliminary assessment, the country could apply for financial assistance to boost local capacity. Ship dismantling includes activities from removing gears and equipment to cutting down and recycling the ship's hull.
The United Nations says more than 90 percent of the world's ship recycling takes place in four countries -- Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and China.
About 95 percent of ship materials can be recycled, such as steel that can be reused in construction and machinery, it said.
The UN said an obsolete vessel could include hundreds of tons of hazardous waste including asbestos, heavy metals, oils and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
PCBs are a dangerous class of chemical that accumulate in the human body, impact the brain and nervous system and cause a range of health effects such as cancer, immune suppression and reproductive damage.
The Basel Convention, which has been signed by 170 countries, bans the international trade of hazardous materials, including from the dismantling of old ships, to help protect the environment and human health.
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