In a stunning turnaround due in large part to a misunderstanding over procedural maneuvers, the International Whaling Commission voted 19 to 18 this month to readmit Iceland.
Iceland quit the commission in 1992 and has had its efforts to rejoin the commission blocked by countries angered at Iceland’s plan to recommence commercial whaling in 2006. According to the New York Times, Iceland’s readmittance was largely the result of the Swedish delegation misunderstanding a procedural challenge by Antigua and Barbuda. In its confusion, the Swedish delegation ended up mistakenly voting in favor of a motion that led to Iceland’s readmission.
“We were not prepared in substance to accept Iceland as a member,” Carl Erik Ehrenkronoa of the Swedish Foreign Ministry told the Times, “but it happened anyway.”
As the Times notes, whaling countries are using the same tactics that anti-whaling forces used to enact the worldwide ban on whaling. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, numerous anti-whaling countries joined the commission and the result was the ban.
Now Japan and other pro-whaling countries are encouraging (and, in some cases, outright bribing them) to join and tip the scales the other way. In the lead up to the ban, it was countries such as Switzerland and Austria who joined and tipped the balance toward the ban on whaling. Now countries like Benin, Gabon and Mongolia are joining, and all are solidly in the pro-whaling camp thanks to Japan’s promises of aid to such countries in exchange for their votes on the commission.
Iceland’s readmittance is a likely turning point, given that Iceland says that in 2006 it will join Norway in openly defying the worldwide ban on commercial whaling.
Overturning the ban on whaling is a long way off, given that it would take a 3/4 vote of the commission, but Rune Frovik, spokesman for a Norwegian whaling association told the Times that there was still a lot of value in just a simple majority,
You can do a lot with a simple majority. For many years, the commission has passed what we call hate resolutions calling on Norway and Japan to stop whaling. Soon they might not be able to pass those resolutions.
This change should make the next meeting of the IWC a bit more interesting.
Source:
Iceland joins whale panel, giving whalers stronger say. Walter Gibbs, The New York Times, October 20, 2002.