Members of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) on Tuesday in Bangkok voted down — for the sixth time in a row — Japan’s proposal to legalise trade in minke whales.
The 13th Cites conference of parties voted 67 against, 55 in favour and 14 abstentions on Japan’s proposal to downlist the Minke whale from Cites’s Appendix I to Appendix II, which would have ended the existing ban on trade in whale meat.
Japan has been seeking to get the minke whale off Cites’s Appendix I, which classifies it as an endangered species prohibited from commercial trade, since the 1987 Cites conference.
Japan’s persistent pro-whaling campaign at Cites has been criticised as an effort to subvert the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) moratorium on commercial whaling.
”Cites surely has grown tired of Japan’s attempts to undermine [the] IWC,” said Sue Fisher, United States director with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.
She added: ”Japan’s population figures are incorrect, some minke whales populations remain endangered, and whales are threatened by global climate change and marine pollution.”
Japan’s stance on whaling has flavoured its overall participation at Cites conferences, which occur once every two-and-a-half years, where it persistently votes for freeing trade in protected species.
Japan on Monday voted in favour of Kenya’s proposal to be granted a quota to trade in ivory, which has been banned by Cites for more than a decade, and voted against Thailand’s proposal to put the Irrawaddy dolphin on Cites’s Appendix I.
”The Japanese are generally the bad guys at these conferences,” said one source at the United Nations Environment Programme. — Sapa-DPA