The whales dodged a bullet, perhaps literally, on the last day of the 56th annual International Whaling Commission meeting in Sorrento, Italy.

Commissioners on Thursday, July 22, considered a resolution that would have required them to vote next year on a Revised Management Scheme (RMS). The version of the RMS on the table, devised by IWC Chair Henrik Fischer of Denmark, would phase in limited commercial whaling over a five-year period and attempt to regulate it. Commissioners dropped the vote on that resolution and instead passed one that will use Fischer's RMS as a starting point for discussions over the next 12 months, leading up to next year's IWC meeting in South Korea.

Many non-governmental organizations were fearing the worse going into Thursday's vote on the RMS resolution, which required only a simple majority. As noted by Kitty Block, special counsel for Humane Society International's United Nations and Treaties section, Fischer's RMS has serious flaws, including a lack of adequate oversight to ensure countries follow designated quotas. What's more, Fischer's plan included a closed-door process to finalize the RMS, a process that would have denied any transparency.

Thursday's agreement, however, altered that course. For starters, Block says, commissioners agreed to open up discussions on the RMS process. "That was one of our major criticisms," Block says. "Serious decisions were being made about the RMS without the knowledge of outside experts, the public, and NGOs. We wouldn't have seen the final RMS document until, literally, days before next year's meeting. That was completely unacceptable. This process is more transparent."

Had commissioners been required to vote next year on Fischer's RMS, there was no guarantee that it would pass, since the proposal amending the IWC schedule would have required a three-quarters majority. Yet, HSI and other NGOs have noticed a sea-change in the attitudes toward adopting a RMS; some conservationists have come to believe that regulating a limited commercial hunt might be better than allowing Japan and Iceland to "scientifically" hunt whales without any oversight. Commercial whaling has been banned since 1986, but the IWC convention allows scientific whaling.

If anything signaled a change in attitude, it was the United States' position on Fischer's RMS. The world's most powerful nation, long an anti-whaling supporter, backed the expedited RMS proposal, a stance that some observers viewed as a betrayal.

Why the Rush?

So why do some commissioners want to accelerate the pace of the RMS? Several reasons. The IWC has been stalemated for years over a RMS, which will oversee commercial whaling if the ban is lifted. The anti- and pro-whaling nations are so polarized on the RMS, they can't reach any agreement on subjects such as a DNA registry and penalties for noncompliance of quotas. Because of this stalemate, Japan has threatened to leave the IWC and start its own international whaling organization or work through other international bodies. Conservationists fear that such a move would give Japan carte blanche to exploit the world's whale stocks.

Fischer's proposal was a way to demonstrate progress not only to Japan, but to the international community at large.

"This is the wrong solution to the problem," says HSI's Block. "Caving in to Japanese pressures just to show progress is the wrong move. The victims will be thousands of whales, some perhaps even from endangered populations, who will die needlessly because a politically divided body can't come to consensus and make the morally correct decision.

"The bottom line," Block continues, "is that the stalemate is a manufactured problem. Japan has created it, simply because it wants to continue to hunt whales for a commercial market. It's time for the international community to put pressure on Japan, not vice versa."

The Problem Won't Go Away

Next year's IWC meeting will be held in South Korea. It will likely include more of the same clashes between pro and anti-whaling nations. In fact, it has the potential to become even more fractious. Japan recently told the BBC that it will leave the IWC by 2006 if whale hunting is not approved by the international body.

Aside from issuing threats, Japan is also securing more allies. One non-profit group has noted that Japan's pro-whaling voting bloc has grown from just nine IWC member nations in 2000 to an estimated 27 this year. It could swell even more next year.

"It seems clear that Japan won't stop until it gets what it wants, which in practice would be an unlimited access to kill whales," notes Block. "The question is, why should the IWC allow a return to commercial whaling? The vast majority of people around the world do not eat whale meat; in fact, studies show that only a tiny fraction of Japanese eat whale meat**. So why are we killing thousands of whales to satisfy such a small population?"

**In 1999, Greenpeace International and International Fund for Animal Welfare jointly asked a British independent research agency, MORI, to survey the attitudes of the Japanese toward whaling. Only 1% of respondents answered that they eat whale meat about once a month.