IWC 2009: Day One Dispatch

by Bernard Unti

Highlights:

• Japan’s scientific whaling program continues to draw criticism, especially following new reports that nearly one third of the minke whales killed were pregnant.
• Greenland plans another proposal for permission to add humpback whales to its annual hunt in spite of its failure to obtain enough votes at last year’s meeting.
• The small working group which has been attempting to find a compromise between the pro-whaling and pro-conservation nations seems to have reached an impasse.

	Japan has apparently been killing pregnant minke whales.

The 61st meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) opened without irony in the modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer’s Casino Pestana Hotel, a volcano-shaped casino/conference center and hotel on the Portuguese island of Madeira, the tip of a geological hotspot on the African plate. Amid the smoldering tensions of a year-long effort to forge a compromise to reduce Japan’s whale killing, the constant chatter about the need to modernize the IWC, and the pervasive sense of high stakes, this was an apt setting.

JARPA II Scandal

After the Madeiran Mandolin Orchestra played and the opening pomp and ceremony ended, the central issues of the day—and the week—quickly emerged. Criticism of Japan’s JARPA II “scientific whaling” program was one of the first things to rumble up, fueled in part by skeptical feedback from the IWC Scientific Committee, which released its 2009 report before the morning session. Monaco’s Commissioner Frederic Briand spoke for many who were scandalized by the news that nearly one third of the 679 minke whales Japan killed in JARPA II were pregnant. JARPA II is certain to draw further scorn as the conference continues.

While not directly discussed in the conference hall, Greenland’s renewed request to take 10 humpbacks was the elephant in the room all day. It was evident coming into the meeting that the Greenland proposal had divided the member nations of the European Union (EU), with several of them pushing for its approval and others seeking to defeat it. With the EU nations committed to voting as a block, many saw a train wreck ahead.

In one terrible aspect, the Greenland proposal represents a shot across the bow at the North American whale watching industry, for the humpbacks who would succumb to the Greenlanders’ harpoons will be those who have migrated from the Caribbean up along the Northeastern seaboard of the United States and Canada to Greenland.

The Future of the IWC

Casting the broadest shadow over the proceedings was the future of the IWC and the terms of reference for a Small Working Group to extend the future-focused process launched last year by William Hogarth, outgoing IWC Chair and US Commissioner. Even the most earnest participants agreed that the process had failed, but some of the nations at Madeira are clinging to the idea that a deal could be struck to reduce scientific whaling by Japan.

The question, of course, is whether reaching that goal would involve sanctioning Japan’s longstanding proposal to conduct coastal commercial whaling instead, effectively trading one population of whales for another.

A proposal to continue the Small Working Group emerged at the end of the first day and will be the subject of discussion on the second.

One Less Worry

One thing missing from IWC this year was the usual worry over how many votes the pro-whaling bloc would bring to the table. The dues of a dozen or so members of the bloc were in arrears, suggesting that Japan had ruled out, as it did last year in Santiago, seeking a vote on the moratorium itself. Whatever else has happened as a result of the focus on the IWC’s future, the era of vote buying has stalled out, for the moment at least.

Contrast in Paradise

While IWC commissioners marked their time in the warm and somewhat stifling conical structure they would occupy all week, thousands of tourists were outside enjoying the fine weather and the pleasant environs of Madeira, now a favored vacation spot within the European Union. Many were whale watching in the Atlantic, where a wide variety of whales and dolphins swim safely in the waters near Madeira. In 2007, estimates placed the number of whale watching visitors to the island at 57,000 and the gross receipts of the whale watching enterprise there at 1.5 million Euros. Whale watching is even more robust in the Azores, once the heart of Portugal’s whaling empire. What a difference a century can make.

Bernard Unti, Ph.D. is senior policy adviser and special assistant to the CEO of The Humane Society of the United States (The HSUS). He is the author of Protecting All Animals, a history of The HSUS, and is currently writing a book on the 19th century animal protection movement.