The success or failure of conservation efforts at this year's International Whaling Commission meeting—June 16-19—appears to hinge on the power of a handful of pro-whaling nations to control the agenda. The name those nations have given their bloody quest: "Normalization" of the IWC.
Japan is spearheading efforts to strip the IWC of its conservation and welfare mandate. At last year's meeting in Ulsan, Korea, the Japanese government tried to eliminate planned discussions and actions on whale killing methods and welfare, the creation and maintenance of sanctuaries, whale watching, and the recently created Conservation Committee. Japan prefers to focus discussions on generating whale quotas and resuming commercial whaling.
Increased Whaling, Secret Ballots
The pro-whaling faction, led by Japan, Norway, and Iceland, needs only a simple majority of the IWC member votes to set its agenda.
Japan also has tried for decades to create a new category of IWC-permitted whaling for coastal communities: "Small-type coastal whaling." If this category is permitted, it will allow Japan to openly whale for commercial purposes for the first time since a ban was imposed in 1986.
For the past ten years and again this year, Japan is calling for secret ballots at the meeting. If a simple majority votes in favor of secret ballots, citizens won't be able to hold their national representatives accountable, and tourists won't be able to avoid pro-whaling countries. If successful, Japan's ploy will make it far easier for nations that are concerned about their public image to vote in favor of whaling.
Revised Management Scheme
Since 1993, IWC-member countries have been hashing out a new method for managing commercial whaling, called the Revised Management Scheme. The IWC cannot vote to lift the ban on commercial whaling until the RMS is in place.
Current drafts of the RMS fall far short of what would be expected in a modern fisheries management regimen. Most modern fisheries agreements are not strong enough to prevent fish stocks from continuing to decline. The fact that the pro-whaling nations will not agree to even these inadequate measures is telling.
To push through an RMS at this year's IWC meeting, Japan and its allies will need a three-quarters majority of IWC members to vote against the whales, numbers that most observers believe they do not yet possess. However, the pro-whaling countries can make progress this year by having a resolution passed calling for the adoption of specific RMS language.
Meanwhile, It's Whaling as Usual
Today's world has no need for commercial whaling. The need for whale bone, blubber, meat, or oil does not drive whaling in the 21st century; greed and politics do. Additionally, killing whales is ecologically irresponsible. Whale populations that were depleted by many years of large-scale commercial whaling have yet to fully recover, and a number of these species remain classified as endangered or threatened.
The commercial whaling ban was supposed to stop all commercial whaling. However, several nations continue to exploit a loophole in the convention which allows scientific whaling, making a mockery of the ban and the IWC's ability to stop the abuses. Since the ban went into effect, more than 24,000 whales have been killed, the majority by 'research' whalers.
