Whaling talks collapse

Abstract

The gap between the whaling nations and those opposed to the hunting of these animals widened at key International Whaling Commission talks in Morocco last month. Nigel Williams reports. The gap between the whaling nations and those opposed to the hunting of these animals widened at key International Whaling Commission talks in Morocco last month. Nigel Williams reports. The controversial attempt to scrap the 24-year-old international moratorium on commercial whaling collapsed last month, to the delight of many anti-whaling campaigners and to the frustration of Japan, Norway and Iceland, the three countries which continue to hunt whales in defiance of world opinion. Delegates from the 88 member states of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in Agadir, Morocco, were unable to reach agreement after two days of secret talks on the three-year-old proposal to lift the official whaling ban in exchange for smaller, agreed kills by the whaling states. The European Union was one of the groups opposing the plan most strongly. The issue is now off the agenda for at least a year until the next meeting of the IWC, but the result was greeted as a triumph by some environmental groups who feared that the deal would put the future of the great whales in jeopardy once again. “We have won the battle to keep the ban in place, but we must continue to fight to win the war on all whaling,” said the chief executive of Britain's Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, Chris Butler-Stroud. “The moratorium stands but Japan, Iceland and Norway continue to whale outside of the sanctions of the IWC, and that is a situation that has to change.” The leader of the British delegation at the talks, the minister for the marine environment, Richard Benyon, said: “We in the UK have been consistently clear that any new agreement must reduce the number of whales that are killed each year with the aim of a complete phase-out of all commercial whaling.” However, Yasue Funayama, the Japanese whaling commissioner, said her country had offered major concessions to reach a compromise and blamed anti-whaling countries that refused to accept the killing of a single animal. The failed deal was proposed by the US, which sought agreement with Japan to secure whaling permissons for its Inuit people in Alaska and avoid trouble with Japan after the US's support for the whaling moratorium in 2002. The Proposal to the IWC would have allowed commercial whaling to be legitimised once again for a period of 10 years, with official IWC “quotas” set for the number of whales which each country would catch. The hope was that these numbers would actually be lower than the number of whales being killed currently by Japan, Norway and Iceland — around 1,500 a year. But no quotas were agreed and many countries thought that a deal would be impossible to police. Japan has pursued its whale hunting under the guise of ‘scientific whaling’ which has infuriated conservationists. In recent years more than 1,000 whales have been killed annually with a peak of more than 2,000 in 2006.“We have won the battle to keep the ban in place, but we must continue to fight to win the war on all whaling” “We have won the battle to keep the ban in place, but we must continue to fight to win the war on all whaling” However, many conservation organisations were dismayed by the outcome of the Morocco meeting. Susan Lieberman, director of international policy for the Pew Environmental Group, said: “We are deeply disappointed that the governments present here, after more than three years of intensive work, could not reach a solution that would benefit whale conservation.” There was particular concern about the Southern Ocean, a region seen as crucial in any effort to mitigate climate change (see p. R541). “The lack of sufficient flexibility shown by Japan to phase out its whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary prevented a decision from being adopted. Continuation of the impasse here may retain the whaling moratorium on paper, but unregulated whaling, outside the IWC control… will now be able to continue.” The hugely popular “Save the Whales” campaign of the 1970s and 1980s mobilised governments and the public around the world behind a moratorium on commercial whaling, enacted by the IWC in 1982 and implemented in 1986. But Japan continues to hunt whales under the notion of scientific whaling and Norway and Iceland have filed objections that allow them to ignore the moratorium. In 2007, the IWC launched a process to find consensus between diametrically opposed views of whale conservation and whaling among member states. The collapse of the talks last month in Morocco makes the future direction of the IWC unclear: will it improve long-term whale conservation, continue with the status quo, or allow hunting of whales to increase? Anti-whaling nations, such as Australia, are delighted at the failure to reinstate commercial whaling. Peter Garrett, the environment minister said that the fact that the proposal to resume commercial whaling is now no longer on the floor of the Commission “is a very positive step”. He said that Australia had been arguing for it very strongly and “we've received strong support in general for the issues that we raised.” “We don't accept the resumption of commercial whaling”, he said. “Not only has Australia's view about this flawed proposal prevailed, and it has met with the support of others, but it also means that it is now in the court of the Japanese and the Japanese whalers to determine whether they are still going to continue to target large numbers of whales in the Southern Ocean.” Pew's Lieberman agrees: “It is vital that the integrity of the moratorium be secured,” she says. “Without the continuation of the moratorium there is no way a three-quarters majority could be attained for an agreement in the IWC, and therefore the maintenance of the moratorium is unquestionable. While the moratorium remains in the schedule, the proposed package would create temporary exceptions to be determined for some species in some areas, and only for those governments that currently undertake commercial whaling.” But the IWC's moves had a different reaction in some of the whaling countries. Kristjan Loftsson, a whaler and member of the Iceland delegation to the IWC, criticised the commission. “Those who want to stop whaling killed 64,000 blue whales between 1933 and 1966, and 105,000 fin whales in the Southern Ocean. The most vocal are the ones with a guilty conscience,” says Larson. He recalls days as a child scanning for whales on his father's ship. In those days “a single boat could, in one season, haul in 50 fin whales, second only in size to blue whales. Last year, Iceland's whaling fleet hunted a total of 125.” But the Australians will have none of it. They are pursuing a case against Japan's scientific whaling at the International Court of Justice but there are worries that the result might mean that Japan just walks away from the IWC. Says Garrett: “we're well prepared to take that case and Australia and Japan accept that the resolution of that particular matter… is one that can be adjudicated in that court.”“The IWC has been deadlocked for decades, with Japan, Norway and Iceland setting unilateral quotas and continuing hunts that flout the commercial whaling moratorium.” “The IWC has been deadlocked for decades, with Japan, Norway and Iceland setting unilateral quotas and continuing hunts that flout the commercial whaling moratorium.” “But there are a range of other issues… that we think need to be very, very seriously looked at and resolved. And the only way that we can do that is to continue the process of agreeing on those things which are positives in the commission and saying ‘listen, where we can work together on non-lethal whale research — let's do it. Where we can identify the economic benefits for developing countries for whale watching — let's provide expert support and additional advice and help.’” Greenpeace's programme director in Japan, Junichi Sato, who faces a jail term after prosecution for claiming that meat smuggled off whaling ships was being sold on in the black market, said: “The IWC has been deadlocked for decades, with Japan, Norway and Iceland setting unilateral quotas and continuing hunts that flout the commercial whaling moratorium. This year, the International Year of Biodiversity, a unique opportunity to transform the IWC and to phase out Japan's reckless Antarctic hunt has emerged.”