The NGO Shipbreaking Platform’s board members are international experts in a wide range of sectors related to maritime policies, environmental law and occupational health. Their experience and know-how contribute immensely to our activities and successes.

 

 

Martin Besieux

Ritwick Dutta

Sigurd Enge

Martin Besieux

Martin has been campaigning for a toxics-free environment for almost thirty years. After working for the Belgian Environmental Federation of Environmental Citizens’ Organisations, Martin joined Greenpeace as a Toxics Campaigner in 1984. He was an integral part of the Greenpeace Clean Seas, Clean Rivers, Clean Production and Clean Product campaigns, participating in various political processes at European and international level. He was one of the lead campaigners on shipbreaking, including the high-profile case of the French aircraft carrier Clemenceau. Since 2007, under the Greenpeace Toxic Tech campaign, he focused on the electronics sector. Starting from 2010, he worked as the Global Lead Company Contact for Greenpeace International for the Detox campaign. Martin has recently retired and serves as an independent board member to the NGO Shipbreaking Platform.

Ritwick Dutta

Ritwick is an environmental lawyer who has been practicing in the Supreme Court of India since 2001. He and his team of environmental lawyers have obtained landmark decisions in the Indian Courts with regards to various environmental issues. In 2003, Ritwick founded the Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE) in New Delhi based on the concept of “environmental democracy”. The organisation helps to restore transparency and accountability in India’s Environmental Impact Assessments to protect the environment and at-risk communities from encroaching big industry.

Sigurd Enge

Sigurd has a maritime background as a navigator and captain in the fishing fleet of the Barents sea and Svalbard. He joined the Bellona Foundation in 1988 and has worked with all types of maritime issues like aquaculture, shipping, petroleum and marine pollution. Today he is in charge of Bellona’s work with the shipping industry and environmental challenges in the Arctic. He is working with business partners, politicians and science networks on innovative use of technology for future solutions for a green shipping industry. LNG projects, hybrid & electric propulsion, maritime safety, oil spill response and shipbreaking is headline for the projects he is involved in.

Robert Evans

Syeda Rizwana Hasan

Robert Evans

Robert is a former Member of the European Parliament (1999-2008) where he represented the British Labour Party. In Parliament, Robert chaired the Delegation for relations with the countries of South Asia and he has focused on EU-Bangladesh relations. During his time as an MEP, he has actively dealt with the shipbreaking issue. He now works as a local Councillor, and as a consultant, in particular with his special expertise in Bangladesh to the charities BRAC and London Tigers.

Syeda Rizwana Hasan

Rizwana is an advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh and the Director of the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA). She has initiated landmark rulings on the shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh and was able to forestall the import of toxic end-of-life vessels to her country. She received the prestigious Goldman Prize 2009 for her work on shipbreaking, and won the Ramon Magsaysay Award 2012, considered ‘the Asian Nobel prize’. She is considered a leading environmentalist in Bangladesh.

Dr Md Irfan Khan

Helen Périvier

Jim Puckett

Dr Muhammad Irfan Khan

Irfan is Professor of environmental science, founder Chairman of the Department of Environmental Science and now Dean of the Faculty of Basic and Applied Sciences at International Islamic University, Islamabad. He has a PhD degree of London University and worked as a post-doctoral research fellowship at Oxford University. He is a qualified Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety Auditor. He has been working on the shipbreaking sector in Pakistan since 2012, and has guided researchers in their work on the issue.

Helen Périvier

Helen is a qualified navigation officer and has ten years of experience serving on ships as a maritime professional and in environmental research, advocacy and education tours. She successfully led the Greenpeace campaign on the European REACH chemicals legislation and has been working on the shipbreaking issue for more than a decade. Helen has a deep understanding of campaigning on environmental issues at both the international and the European level. She holds a M.Sc. in Integrated Coastal Ecosystem Science, Policy & Management from the University of New Hampshire and a ALM in Sustainability & Environmental Management from the Harvard Extension School. Helen is one of the five founding members of the Platform.

Jim Puckett

Jim has been an environmental health and justice activist for 25 years. He is the founder of Earth Economics and the Basel Action Network (BAN). He has represented civil society at the Basel Convention since its inception in 1989 and has seen major traction with developing countries refusing the import of hazardous waste from industrialised countries. BAN has successfully set up the E-Stewardship Programme, a label for the environmentally safe and sound recycling of e-waste. Jim is one of the five founding members of the Platform.