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| Greenpeace |
A whaling ship hauls in a minke whale as part of Japan's
scientific whaling program. |
By Bernard Unti
The winds of consensus blew irregularly through the halls of the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage yesterday, as the IWC wrangled over Greenland's bid for an expanded whale quota, Japan's scientific and coastal whaling ambitions, and a proposal to form the Southern Atlantic Ocean Sanctuary.
Wrangling over Expanded Greenland Whaling Plan
Greenland's bid for an expanded whale quota got a good hearing from other nations at the International Whaling Commission. Private negotiations produced a revised Greenland plan that swayed at least some of the delegations that forced it off the agenda one day earlier.
Even so, a final vote on the Greenland quota, sponsored by Denmark, was set aside until today. While certain IWC delegations expressed their appreciation for Denmark's efforts at compromise, others felt the Greenland plan strayed too far from established quotas.
The revised plan called for 200 minkes from the West Greenland stock per year, 19 fin and two bowhead whales each year for five years. Denmark secured a more favorable reception after dropping its request for taking a quota of humpback whales, not hunted by Greenland since 1986 and listed as threatened by the World Conservation Union (IUCN).
The United States anchored the bloc of nations that signaled openness to the revised Greenland proposal. The United Kingdom led those non-whaling nations that wanted to take a firm position against Greenland's proposal to add bowheads to its plate.
Japan's Whaling Ambitions Hits Rough Waters
The day's surest sign that the spirit of consensus had left the room came before passage of New Zealand's resolution asking Japan to "suspend indefinitely the lethal aspects" of its Antarctic research programs. After lengthy back and forth on the merits of non-lethal research versus lethal sampling (the preferred method of Japan's "scientific" whaling projects) preceded the vote.
Anticipating another defeat in its annual proposal for approval of small-scale coastal whaling, Japan steered a careful course. After introducing whalers from the four communities, lead delegate Joji Morishita reviewed the twenty-year history of the proposal, calling it a story of "broken promises" and "unanswered questions." It was, in the words of Humane Society International's Patricia Forkan, "a highly revisionist account."
Having worked to recast the coastal whaling proposal as a hunt that deserved the consideration generally reserved for aboriginal subsistence whaling, the whole package seemed like a difficult sell for Japan's best known IWC representative. Still, Morishita was game. With the home audience in mind, he made parts of his presentation in Japanese, and, in closing, he told delegates that, if no positive action were taken on Japan's proposal in Anchorage, "we would have to think seriously about some alternatives."
When it became clear through subsequent discussion that the like-minded countries would resist the proposal, Japan asked that it be set aside until later in the conference. Most observers assume that later meant today, the fourth and final day of IWC 59, and no further reference to it ensued.
Even as Morishita wound down his pitch, however, whale protectionists at the meeting were trumpeting the news that Japan's fourth largest fisheries company, Kyokuyo, had publicly pledged to stop its sale of whale meat in Japan. The decision follows a campaign led by the Environmental Investigation Agency, Humane Society International and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which issued a joint release distributed at the conference.
Skepticism on Sanctuary, Whale-Watching
In a blow that fell hard upon its sponsors, a mid-morning vote on the Southern Atlantic Ocean Sanctuary, while gaining 39 positive votes, failed to secure the three-quarter majority needed to pass.
The vote, to some extent, pitted developing nations of the Latin bloc—with a stronger commitment to the sanctuary concept and the economic advantages of non-lethal pursuits like whale watching—against an array of poorer nations in Africa and the Caribbean. Delegates from the latter group seemed to identify more strongly with the interests of rich whaling nations than with the whale-friendly tourism base that is beginning to flourish in many of Latin America's maturing economies.
In a late night discussion of a resolution on whale watching, some of the same nations expressed their skepticism about its benefits and focused their remarks on its purported harm to whales. The resolution passed in spite of them, and just a little after 10 p.m., U.S. Commissioner William Hogarth put the gavel down on what all agreed had been a long day.
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.
