By Kitty Block
St. Kitts, West Indies—Japan trotted out a fisherman from the town of Taiji to talk about the good old days of unregulated whaling—and how the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on the commercial slaughter of whales has ruined a cultural heritage dating back centuries. Japan's alternate commissioner Joji Morishita followed up the fisherman's comments with even more charged rhetoric—namely that the moratorium has stripped the residents of several Japanese coastal communities of their human right to kill minke whales. "Taiji is the one suffering," Morishita said.
The majority of the IWC commissioners decided otherwise. In an early evening vote at the 58th annual IWC meeting in St. Kitts, commissioners struck down Japan's proposal to partially reopen commercial whaling and annually kill up to 150 minke whales from the Okhotsk Sea-West Pacific stock for three years. Japan couldn't even secure a simple majority for a proposal that required three-quarters approval for passage. The final tally was 30 for, 31 against, and four abstentions.
"There were so many reasons that commissioners ruled against the proposal," said Humane Society International President Patricia Forkan. "The Scientific Committee hasn't finished its assessment of the whale stock or provided an abundance estimate. Japan already has thousands of pounds of whale meat stockpiled in warehouses. And most important of all, unlike the picture that Japan likes to paint of starving little villages, these coastal communities don't need the whale meat to survive. These are perfectly functioning, modern towns."
While the minke proposal was the only vote for the day, there was still plenty of drama throughout Saturday. A pair of issues—a stalemate over the Revised Management Scheme and Japan's orchestrated plan to "normalize" the IWC (i.e., turn it into a whaling organization)—underscored the great divide within the IWC, which Japan has stocked with pro-whaling allies to do battle with the conservation-minded countries that once dominated the organization.
During the morning session, Japan and its allies insisted that conservation nations have undermined progress on the RMS, a comprehensive plan to regulate and monitor commercial whaling should the moratorium be lifted. But the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and other anti-whaling nations pointed the finger right back at Japan, saying the island nation was the sole reason for the impasse on the RMS. Japan, the conservation-minded commissioners said, has failed to embrace core safeguards that are standard in other international environmental and fisheries conventions, such as independent on-board observers or strong penalties for non-compliance.
If challenged, New Zealand's alternate commissioner Jim McLay said he was prepared to provide a detailed, point-by-point breakdown of the compromises conservation-minded countries were willing to make on the RMS—and how Japan rejected every one of them. Ultimately, commissioners said, Japan just wants to conduct commercial whaling under a weak management scheme, while simultaneously continuing to conduct "scientific whaling." The dual situation could lead to whaling on a scale not seen since the moratorium went into effect in 1986.
Both sides offered solutions to deal with the current impasse within the IWC. Japan argued for a return toward "normalization" within the body, which the country vaguely defined as a resumption of commercial whaling—only with better judgment than in the past, when full-scale whaling led some species to the brink of extinction. But as Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell noted, Japan's idea of sound judgment is to, as part of its scientific program, hunt endangered fin and vulnerable humpback whales.
Besides, as New Zealand Environment Minister Chris Carter said, the world has changed a lot since 1946 when the IWC was formed. Many international bodies have embraced conservation policies, including the IWC. The world, including many people in Japan, wants conservation, not more whale killing. "We don't live in the past," Carter said. "We live in the present."
The Netherlands supplied the conservationists' counter-proposal to Japan's "normalization" plan: a high-level meeting with each nation's foreign affairs experts. These experts tend to see a country's agenda in much wider terms than the fisheries officials who attend IWC meetings. "The idea is," said HSI's Forkan, "foreign affairs officials would be more willing to compromise on whaling issues than the often intractable fisheries people."
But Japan and its allies rejected the high-level meeting plan in favor of their own impromptu get-together. At their meeting, scheduled for June 19 in a room apart from the official IWC proceedings, the Japan said they will lay out their vision for the "normalization" plan. Conservationists worry that it will look a lot like the St. Kitts and Nevis "declaration," which Japan and its allies passed out late Saturday. Among other things, the declaration notes that "the moratorium which was clearly intended as a temporary measure is no longer valid."
"Japan appears to be trying to sneak in a serious schedule change, which requires three-quarters approval, in a resolution form, which only requires a simple majority," said HSI's Forkan. "If Japan manages to pass the St. Kitts declaration as a simple majority resolution, they could try to convince other international bodies that the IWC supports commercial whaling, which could then open up trade in whale products. That's something Japan really wants."
Random spoutings from the IWC meeting:
• After its defeat on the minke whale proposal, Japan withdrew its proposal to annually kill up to 150 Bryde's whales from the Western Stock of the North Pacific.
• Officials with Greenpeace were seen at the IWC meeting today, a couple of days after the government of St. Kitts denied entry to a ship from the environmental organization. It was the same ship, MY Arctic Sunrise, that confronted Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. "I think this is an interesting meeting for the government of St. Kitts," Greenpeace's Shane Rattenbury told the local "Sun" newspaper in St. Kitts, "in terms of their international reputation…We now have a situation where they have banned a peaceful vessel from coming in their waters and we could end up with St. Kitts being known as a place where the pro-whalers won the majority and they have resumed commercial whaling."
