Deadlock Looms as Whale Savers and Hunters Meet
Date: 19-Jul-04
Country: ITALY
Author: Robin Pomeroy
When the IWC's four-day annual meeting begins in Sorrento, Italy, on Monday, the two sides will be so divided that any major advance on how to manage the populations of the giant marine mammals is unlikely to be achieved.
Green groups say the IWC's 14-year-old ban on commercial whaling is openly flouted by several member countries, leading to the death of at least 1,200 whales each year. They want the body to ensure more protection for marine mammals
Pro-whalers say the ban is outdated and the IWC should now allow hunting of certain species under rules that would ensure they can survive and reproduce.
The whaling lobby is frustrated that deadlock means the moratorium, agreed by the IWC in 1982 and put in place in 1986, will not be lifted.
Japan is so irritated at the ban that it is considering withholding funding or even pulling out.
The High North Alliance, which represents whalers in Norway, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, was blunt. "The general moratorium on all commercial whaling is the basis of the contentious situation that runs the risk of self-destructing the IWC," it said .
EMOTIONS RUNNING HIGH
As any big decision requires a 75 percent vote, and while the IWC is fairly evenly divided between the pro and anti-whaling camps, progress in either direction is unlikely in a debate where emotions on both sides run high.
"Save the whale" remains a rallying cry of the environmental movement years after the plight of endangered whales spurred activists to take to rubber boats to stop whaling in the 1970s.
Much of the English-speaking world and Europe sees whales as a wonder of nature and their killing as cruel and barbaric.
But hunter nations say many species are abundant and should be available for exploitation, as fish stocks are.
"Whale meat is rich in protein, lean and tasty," reads a fact sheet provided by the High North Alliance, adding that "free-range" meat is more environmentally sound that factory farmed products.
Pro-whalers often see whale hunting as a matter of national pride and tradition threatened by foreign interference.
"Asking Japan to abandon this part of its culture would compare to Australians being asked to stop eating meat pies, Americans being asked to stop eating hamburgers and the English being asked to go without fish and chips," the Japanese Whaling Association says on its Web Site.
LEGAL BUT IMPOSSIBLE
In committee meetings last week ahead of the main session, delegates were due to discuss a compromise paper to create a "Revised Management Scheme" (RMS) that would set rigorous procedures for overseeing any return to commercial hunting.
In that paper, obtained by Reuters, IWC Chairman Henrik Fischer admits the deadlock is hurting the body.
"At present our organization is not generally seen to be working effectively and indeed the present polarized views are, I believe, detrimental to conservation," he says.
The compromise plan for preserving stocks, which would include deploying teams of international observers and DNA sampling of whale meat to trace its origins, would be "the most advanced and well-tested scientific approach to the management of natural resources" in existence, the paper says.
Not all environmental groups are opposed to the system. WWF International (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) is pushing the IWC to approve a strong RMS.
The whalers, on the other hand, suspect their opponents will make the system so onerous as to be impossible to follow.
"Anti-whaling nations...want to make sure that in the unlikely event that the RMS is completed and implemented, whaling becomes so burdensome and costly that it effectively removes any economic interest...making whaling "legal, but impossible,"" the High North Alliance said.