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Divided And Deadlocked Dark Days Loom For Whaling Body
Frigate Bay (AFP) Jun 21, 2006 About the only thing member countries of the polarized International Whaling Commission can agree on is that it doesn't work. A turbulent, often bad-tempered five days of annual talks in the Caribbean nation of St Kitts and Nevis only served to deepen divisions in the organization, and spark speculation over its future. For anti-whaling countries, like Australia, Britain and New Zealand, along with a clutch of European nations, the IWC doesn't work because around 2,000 whales are culled a year - despite a moratorium on commercial hunts. "Regardless of the rhetoric and the posturing here, very little has been achieved for either whales or people this week," said Dr. Susan Lieberman of global conservation group WWF. "Nearly two thousand whales have been killed since last year's meeting by Japan, Norway and Iceland," she said. Japan conducts "research whaling" which is allowed by the IWC, but regarded by anti-whaling campaigners, who say meat from the hunts ends up on Japanese dinner plates, as a loophole in the organization's charter. Iceland conducts a small scientific whaling program and Norway does not accept the moratorium at all. Dr Joth Sing, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) warned: "Japan is killing more whales in the open sea each year - more than 1,000 this year alone - and nothing happened this week at the IWC to change that." But pro-whaling nations, led by Japan, believe the IWC is not working precisely because of that moratorium - and want to return the body to what they say is its original mandate - regulating sustainable commercial whaling. Split 50-50 down the middle, the organization is effectively deadlocked and no side is able to land a knockout blow. The moratorium needs a currently unobtainable 75 percent majority vote to be overturned. So emotional is the subject, so political are the arguments, that some observers doubt whether the IWC will survive. That viewpoint was bolstered this week as Japan held talks attended by 37 nations, outside the IWC umbrella, to discuss a meeting it plans to hold before next year's annual talks on how to implement its reform drive - a process it calls "normalization." Its critics fear this may be the start of a bid to split from the IWC. "What I envision their plan to be, is to set up a parallel organization, a whalers club. What they want to do is have their their own version of an IWC that doesn't have conservation measures, that is not transparent," said Kitty Block of Humane Society International. While Japan says it wants to stay in the IWC, it says it wants progress toward its reform plans within a "few years" to make the body viable. The task of saving the fissured IWC will fall to US commissioner Bill Hogarth, elected as the organization's chairman on Tuesday. He will have to find a way to avoid next year's talks in Alaska - at which a politically sensitive US quota for bowhead whales for aboriginal hunters in the state will come up - hitting a brick wall. "If you talk to a lot of countries, (they say) the US may be the only group right now who can lead the IWC through this," Hogarth told reporters. Though the United States is part of the "like minded" group, which supports the ban on commercial whale hunts, it is seen by some pro-whaling states as more pragmatic than nations like Australia, Britain and New Zealand. Some observers feel that after reaching the brink of its own possible demise, the IWC may finally change. The new strength of pro-whaling states was demonstrated by the fact they grabbed their first majority in the IWC for around two decades in a vote Sunday on a so-called St Kitts and Nevis declaration, which declared the moratorium "no longer necessary". Their cause was helped by new members Cambodia, the Marshall Islands, Mali, Gambia and Togo who signed up to the pro-whaling cause. "The passing of the St Kitts and Nevis declaration ... has changed the dynamics of the organization and is likely to cause all parties to reassess their approach towards regulated whaling," said Eugene Lapointe, of the IWMC World Conservation Trust, a conservation group which supports sustainable hunting. "As of this week, all parties have to negotiate from a position of equality," Lapointe said. Conservationists meanwhile have to work out how to revive a campaign to save whales, which most of them believed had been won in their 1980s heydey. Some activists are putting more pressure on Denmark - a swing vote on the IWC - which supported the St Kitts and Nevis declaration.
Source: Agence France-Presse Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links International Whaling Commission Follow the Whaling Debate
Japan With The Momentum After World Whaling Talks
Frigate Bay (SPX) Jun 21, 2006Japan will leave annual global whaling talks Tuesday after landing its heaviest ever blows against a 20-year moratorium on commercial whale hunts. Environmentalists and anti-whaling states entered the five days of annual talks in the Caribbean worried that Tokyo would finally wrest control of the International Whaling Commission (IWC). |
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