Tag: International Whaling Commission

Iceland's Membership in IWC Rejected; Threatens to Resume Whale Hunts

This year’s meeting of the 56-year-old International Whaling Commission started with a bang when the 48-country commission voted to deny Iceland membership. Iceland’s delegation responded by walking out of the meeting and threatening to resume commercial whaling with or without IWC approval.

Iceland was a member of the IWC until 1992 when its delegates pulled out of a meeting due to the IWC’s anti-whaling stance. Since then it has been relegated to having observer status.

It has been kept out of the IWC for one reason — if Iceland is admitted, pro-whaling countries would likely have enough votes to open discussion about lifting the ban on commercial whaling. Anti-whaling countries have demanded that Iceland accept the ban on whaling as a precondition for rejoining the IWC.

Asked about the possibility of his country resuming commercial whaling, Iceland Whaling Commissioner Stefan Asmundsson said, “From the political point of view, it is much better to do it within the framework of the international organization. We were hoping to do this within the IWC.”

The IWC also rejected Japan’s request to kill an addition 50 whales annually for research purposes. On the other hand, pro-whaling nations failed in their attempts to create new whale sanctuaries in the South Pacific and South Atlantic, which drew the ire of British Fisheries minister Elliot Morley who said,

There’s no doubt whale-watching eclipses the whaling industry. . . . [Japan’s harvesting of whales is] the kind of unstable approach to whaling which threatens to collapse this whole enterprise. Particularly when countries like Japan treat science with such contempt.

Japan threatened to remove Japanese scientists from the IWC’s scientific committee after losing the vote to harvest more whales.

Sources:

Iceland hints it may hunt whales as summit falters. Richard Lloyd Parry, The Independent (London), May 22, 2002.

Iceland quits whaling conference: Country threatens to resume hunt. Associated Press, May 21, 2002.

Iceland Plans to Resume Whaling; Voting Rights Revoked

At the International Whaling Commission meeting in London, Iceland’s voting rights were revoked after that country refused to recognize the 15-year old moratorium on commercial whaling. Before the meeting began, Iceland’s whaling commissioner had said that Iceland would resume commercial whaling of minke and fin whales within that country’s coastal waters.

Iceland’s parliament voted to resume whaling as soon as possible in 1999, and a resumption of whaling has wide support on the island nation of 250,000.

Iceland maintains that the IWC lacks the authority to revoke its voting privileges. This could be an extremely important development since many observers believe that Japan and Norway have finally garnered enough support to overturn the moratorium in commercial whaling. Any decision to overturn the moratorium would require approval by 75 percent of IWC members.

Norway objected to the moratorium and is not bound by it — it kills about 500 minke whales every year.

The moratorium on hunting minke and gray whales is almost certainly going to collapse very soon as both species’ populations have recovered to the point where it is becoming increasingly difficult for the IWC to justify the moratorium on scientific grounds.

Sources:

Iceland set to resume whaling. Richard Middleton, Associated Press, July 21, 2001.

Angry split at whaling meeting. The BBC, July 23, 2001.

PETA: Eat The Whales

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals launched its latest campaign in London over the weekend, urging people to eat more whale meat.

PETA’s Bruce Friedrich showed up at the 23rd International Whaling Commission meeting, where the international ban on whaling was the topic of much heated discussion. Iceland, Japan and Norway want to abandon the ban and threatened to begin commercial whaling with or without international agreement.

Which would be fine with Friedrich who said he would prefer that people converted to vegetarianism, “but meat addicts who won’t try to kick their habit would cause a lot less misery by abandoning their cultural aversion to eating whales.”

According to Friedrich, “If you’re not vegetarian you are responsible for far more suffering and deaths than one Japanese or Norwegian whaler.” Friedrich also suggested that people should stop eating “chicken nuggets and haddock fillets in favor of whale whoppers.”

Anti-whaling groups weren’t amused, with The Times (London) quoting an unnamed whaling opponent as calling the PETA protest an “irresponsible publicity stunt” (which is the best three word summary of PETA I’ve seen yet).

No word on what whaling representatives from Iceland, Japan and Norway thought about PETA’s claims, but at least the Makah will now have PETA in its corner when animal rights activists try to disrupt their upcoming whale hunt.

Source:

Outrage at ‘eat whales’ campaign. Chris Bunting, The Times (London), July 23, 2001.

People urged to eat whale meat. Hugh Muir and Peter Gruner, This Is London, July 23, 2001.

Whaling ban under threat. CNN, July 23, 2001.

Whaling Ban Likely to Fall

The latest meeting of the International Whaling Commission all but turned into a rout for anti-whaling forces and likely presages the sort of battles that will be fought around the world in coming decades over the best way to preserve endangered species.

It’s only slightly oversimplifying to say that the fight over whaling boils down to two incompatible positions — on the one side are countries and activists who maintain that whaling is simply wrong regardless of whether or not whales are endangered. On the other side are nations that advocate hunting whales as part of long term plans to sustainably maintain whale populations.

For those opposed to whaling under any circumstance, the main problem is that the IWC has been too successful. In 1986 it imposed a worldwide ban on whaling, although the ability of the IWC to enforce that ban is pretty much non-existent. Japan has in fact resumed hunting small numbers of whales on the pretense of doing so for purely scientific purposes and Norway opposed the moratorium in the first place and largely ignored it. Despite this, in large measure the conservation effort worked and many endangered species of whales have come back with a vengeance.

Now Japan, Norway and other nations say that the science is on their side — whale populations have recovered to a point to sustainably allow a resumption in commercial hunting. But many of the nations on the IWC oppose whaling because, as the BBC summed it up, “they regard whaling as inhumane, unnecessary, and deeply unpopular with their electorates.”

The Japanese representative to the IWC blasted this “no whaling at any costs” view, pointing out the hypocrisy of the Australian position given that Australia opposes any resumption of whaling but on the other hand slaughters millions of kangaroos each year. “Perhaps if we renamed minke whales the ‘kangaroos of the sea,’ the Australian public would support” a resumption in whaling.

Ultimately regardless of who is right about the scientific case, the IWC’s steadfast insistence on no whaling ultimately may backfire and result in less protections for whaling. As the even the IWC secretary, Dr. Ray Gabmell, told BBC News, the pro-whaling nations are likely to leave the IWC if it maintains its ideological opposition to the resumption of whaling. Whaling outside the purvey of the IWC would almost certainly be worse for the whales than hunting under the aegis of the IWC.

“I would think it much better that it was brought within international regulations and oversight,” Gambell said. “I think the commission will need to move forward on measures which would allowed controlled whaling, otherwise it will lose credibility. If the commission cannot set its house in order, people will start to ask: ‘Why do we need it at all?'”

This is not dissimilar to the issue currently facing species preservation plans in the United States, such as for wolves, where activists fight to bring a species back but then fight tooth and nail any attempt to control their population through hunting. Unfortunately, if political communities know that once an endangered species recovers that they will have no means to control its numbers, this creates an enormous disincentive to preserve endangered species, as well as leaving the impression that preserving endangered species is not about science but about Green sentimentality.

Around the world the self-interest of communities is being used to spur efforts to save endangered species, but the irrational attempt to ban culling and hunting of species once they have recovered threatens to reverse that progress.

Sources:

Australia accused of whaling hypocrisy. The BBC, July 2, 2000.

Whaling ban stans – for now. The BBC, July 6, 2000.

Whaling commission struggles to survive. The BBC. July 4, 2000.

Whale sanctuary rejected. The BBC. July 4, 2000.

Controversy swells around whaling commission meeting. ENN. June 29, 2000.