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| A beluga whale. |
By Bernard Unti
When U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) addresses delegates at the 59th annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission today, he will emphasize the importance of subsistence hunting to the survival of Iňupiat and Yup'ik villages in Alaska. But most of those assembled will be wondering whether the IWC itself can survive another fractious encounter between the whaling and anti-whaling factions.
There were few rumors of consequence circulating at Anchorage's Captain Cook Hotel on the weekend before the meeting. However, longtime participants from national delegations and non-governmental organizations intimate that the debate over aboriginal subsistence whaling (ASW) quotas is likely to be the powder keg issue at IWC 59.
The AWS quotas have come up for renewal after five years. In 2002, at IWC 54 in Shimonoseki, Japan, the Alaska bowhead quota and other aboriginal proposals were left in limbo for months after the whaling bloc linked their passage to the Japanese proposal for a coastal commercial whaling allotment.
This year, the same thing could happen, as Japan continues to press for the approval of small-scale coastal whaling, and is expected to join Norway and Iceland in an attempt to delete the term "aboriginal" from the IWC Schedule in favor of a word like "indigenous" or "traditional." The new term would then be used to situate and rationalize Japan's community-based whaling proposals alongside the subsistence and culturally-based whaling of Alaskan and other indigenous peoples.
Sen. Stevens, commenting on his late April meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister, expressed confidence about the bowhead quota. "During my conversation with the Prime Minister," Stevens reported, "he gave me his word that Japan would not try to tie its commercial whaling interests to the Eskimo cultural harvest of whales."
This isn't much of an assurance in light of the political craft the Japanese have perfected within the IWC. The ASW quotas need a three-quarter vote to pass, and it would be child's play for the Japanese to ensure that it falls short while simultaneously casting a vote in favor of the allotments themselves.
In the same vein, Japan is at least a consenting partner in the provocative opportunism of Greenland, which has requested an increased ASW quota that would include 10 humpback whales in addition to the 187 minkes and 10 fin whales expected. Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark, which will defend this proposal within the IWC on May 29, when the debate over ASW quotas is scheduled to occur.
At today's meeting, the anti-whaling nations are expected to win a simple voting majority, securing the right to establish the week's agenda. If they do, it would ensure their ability to preserve a broader whale protection agenda for the conference, one that would permit discussion of whale watching, marine sanctuaries, animal welfare, climate change, and environmental concerns that have preoccupied the so-called "like-minded" bloc at IWC during the last few years.
With little information leaking out of the official delegations this year, and few other sources from which to glean reliable intelligence, representatives of the numerous non-governmental organizations convening at IWC stayed busy at other pursuits. With the tally sheet suggesting the anti-whaling bloc's recapture of the voting majority, some took a day off to go whale watching, seeking emotional inspiration for the fights that lay ahead. Others stayed hard at work, gearing up for the meeting by ratcheting up their pressure campaigns, mostly targeting like-minded nations in the anti-whaling bloc with pleas for active resistance to the proposals of Greenland, Iceland, Japan, and Norway. On Sunday, whale protectors paraded in the streets outside of the hotel, and joined actress Hayden Panettiere for a special screening of "Whaledreamers" at a nearby theater.
Today, however, the guessing and the waiting come to an end, and the gamesmanship begins.
Bernard Unti, senior policy adviser and special assistant to the president, received his doctorate in U.S. history in 2002 from American University. His book, "Protecting All Animals: A Fifty-Year History of The Humane Society of the United States," is available from Humane Society Press.
