A deeply divided International Whaling Commission (IWC) voted to beef up efforts to protect whales, a step greeted as a historic shift by conservation groups but denounced by Japan and its pro-whaling allies.
The 25-20 vote on Monday on a resolution that called for ”strengthening the conservation agenda” of the IWC drew only faint applause — after a day of often bitter debate at the group’s annual meeting. The commission has become increasingly polarised since it imposed a global ban on commercial whaling in 1986.
”Whales around the world are safer today thanks to this landmark decision,” said Fred O’Regan, president of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. ”It marks a move from centuries of exploitation to a new century of wildlife conservation.”
Monday’s vote set up a committee within the 50-nation IWC that will have the task of working with wildlife groups and bolstering efforts to protect cetaceans, or fishlike marine mammals. It is expected to start work next year.
The resolution does not specify exactly what issues should be addressed, but World Wildlife Fund delegate Susan Lieberman said the panel should ”tackle the variety of threats beyond commercial whaling”, among them the accidental drowning of whales in fishing nets.
The so-called ”Berlin Initiative” was backed by nations including the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Britain and Australia — whose head delegate argued that the IWC needed to lose its image as ”a broken-down whalers’ club”.
”Australia hopes that nations that are reluctant to join a commission of whalers will be willing to join a strengthened commission with whale conservation at its heart,” Conall O’Connell said.
Still, the ballot at the IWC’s 55th annual meeting highlighted a deepening split between the resolution’s backers and whaling nations such as Japan, Norway and Iceland, who were supported by several Caribbean and African countries.
They argued forcefully that Monday’s resolution was moving the IWC away from its mandate to support the whaling industry. Japan, Norway and Iceland and other critics said after the vote that they might simply boycott the new committee.
”This is essentially hijacking the term ‘conservation,”’ said Iceland’s chief delegate, Stefan Asmundsson. The objective of the commission, he argued, is ”to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus provide for the proper development of the whaling industry”.
Japan had threatened to walk out of the four day meeting if the resolution passed. While it didn’t do so immediately, a senior representative said it was still weighing whether to stay, and said he saw little point in the new panel.
”If you establish such a polarised committee, what is the merit?” said Masayuki Komatsu, the deputy head of Japan’s delegation.
Japan also has said it will ask the Berlin meeting for a special quota on minke whales to be hunted in the country’s coastal waters — likening the proposed quota to those granted to aboriginal whale hunters in places like Alaska and Greenland.
Japan kills hundreds of whales annually under an IWC exemption for limited ”research” hunts. The government says the hunts help gauge the impact of whale herds on fisheries stocks and provide data on their migration patterns and population trends.
Critics call the programme commercial whaling in disguise because the meat from the slaughtered whales is later sold to wholesalers and ends up in Japanese restaurants.
Iceland is also expected to seek permission to kill whales in the name of scientific research. Norway has simply ignored the ban on commercial whaling.
While backers hope that Monday’s decision will improve the outlook for whales, the outlook for the commission looked less clear.
”Unfortunately, I do not think that this committee solves the problems of the International Whaling Commission,” said the body’s chairperson, Bo Fernholm of Sweden.
”We still have to come to grips with the problems of finding the balance between conservation and management.” – Sapa-AP