Dr. Sidney Holt’s Thoughts on IWC Negotiations
Volume LXI · No. 1a · Rome, Italy · Monday March 9, 2009
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When I first experienced IWC in 1960, a difficult agreement was reached on a British initiative: to reduce Antarctic baleen whale catches to sustainable levels on the basis of independent scientific advice. Japan said: “We don’t need more scientific advice,” but agreed to the deal. By 1963, when strong positive action was shown to be more urgent than had been thought, Japan said: “Sorry, then is then, now is now. We cannot be held to what we agreed three years ago.”
The US then proposed a three-year phase down. Each following year Japan backed out of that deal. Look at the Verbatim Plenary records if you don’t believe me.
A few years ago the Irish Commissioner, Michael Canny, came up with a bright idea: Effectively declare the High Seas to be a sanctuary and allow some limited commercial whaling from selected land stations. I had already come to the conclusion that negotiation was necessary and timely if Southern Hemisphere whales were to be saved. Not many people liked “the Irish Proposal,” and eventually Michael left the IWC orbit with his tail between his legs.
Now we have a discussion in progress that is a parody of a negotiation. The SH whales are being held hostage; the terrorists holding them give vague signs of being ready to deal. The ransom they want is the whales of the Northeast Pacific, now. The offer - maybe - is perhaps to let the hostages go, a few at a time, during the next five years. Meanwhile, however, the hostages are hungry and beginning to gobble-up all our fish. Big dilemma! Maybe second thoughts next year?
Who takes this seriously? Who believes the kidnappers will keep a promise? With luck, some think, the matter will be resolved peacefully - by the current financial crisis and ICR bankruptcy.
But no! Our Icelandic friends say that killing more whales will resolve the financial crisis, put corrupt banks in order, appease gullible savers and put back life into a worthless currency.
I think I’ll go back to bed.
Wasteful Whaling
Volume LXI · No. 1a · Rome, Italy · Monday March 9, 2009
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Throughout most of the 20th century, the more responsible whaling companies and some of their governments worked towards fuller utilization of the carcasses of whales. They were encouraged to do so by pre-WWII agreements between companies and after by provisions in the IWC founding convention. This was essentially to improve profits—or diminish losses—by producing more marketable by-products than the dominant commodity: whale oil in earlier years (with highly volatile global price), frozen meat later. It involved development of, and investment in, processing plants at land-stations and on large factory ships.
However, in 1951 the IWC decided to exempt the minke whale from the requirement for full utilization [See ICRW Schedule, Paragraph 19(b)]. This was mainly to accommodate Norwegian and Greenlandic whalers who either flensed the whales hauled transversely across small catchers, or who towed the carcasses ashore to beaches and into harbors instead of up the ramps of land stations equipped with processing facilities. From the same period minke whales have been exempt from meeting minimum length criteria (it being said that measurement would be difficult and could not be enforced) so that the anti-conservation practice of killing large numbers of juveniles has continued through to the present day.
In 1951 no one could have expected that the little minke would become the dominant species in commercial whaling, world-wide, being killed by the tens —nay, hundreds—of thousands by pelagic expeditions whose factories were relatively small and not equipped with a processing plant as well as by technically advanced pelagic catcher-factories fitted with freezing plant and cold storage. And in the Antarctic, today, thousands of tons of minke carcasses are jettisoned every year, contrary to the pollution regulations of the Antarctic Treaty system and the IMO.
This is the appallingly wasteful industry that some Members of the IWC’s Small Working Group, set up to find ways of legitimizing some commercial-scientific and straight commercial whaling, envisage as a future for the whaling industry.
After all, as the Norwegian Commissioner told the IWC in 1973 “we have never considered the minke to be a real whale. That’s why we never provided data about it.”
For more information, a review of this matter in digital format, is available from the author. It is entitled “Wasteful Whaling: a memorandum on the subject of bringing of minke whales under the control of the Commission,” 2009, 16pp.
—Dr. Sydney Holt
Voices Condemn Hogarth Deal
Volume LXI · No. 1a · Rome, Italy · Monday March 9, 2009
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“The American people care deeply about protecting whales and do not want the U.S. to be the broker who capitulated to those who still want to kill whales for commercial gain,” Congressman Nick Rahall, Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, wrote to the acting head of the US Commerce Department.
“This ‘back of a napkin’ deal is a concession to Japan, and marks an abrupt shift in American policy. It’s a devastating blow to whale protection and conservation around the globe, and a failure in U.S. leadership at the International Whaling Commission,” said Kitty Block, vice president of Humane Society International. Anticipating the secret bargain, a coalition of groups, including Humane Society International, asked President Barack Obama to renew and strengthen U.S. policy.
“This is a complete sell-out of the United States’ long-held opposition to commercial whaling and the commitment of the American people to whales,” charged David Phillips, Director of the International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP) of Earth Island Institute. “It’s time for the Obama Administration to remove William Hogarth and other Bush holdovers and change the US delegation to the IWC to leading the protection of whales and dolphins. The Japan Fisheries Agency has repeatedly defied the global moratorium on commercial whaling by calling their catch ‘scientific’, but selling the meat in Japanese markets and restaurants. Now, under this proposed ‘deal,’ Japan would get out from under international scorn and criticism, switching to killing whales in their own coastal waters while continuing the charade of ‘science’ in the Antarctic and North Pacific.”
“The endgame (of the deal) appears to contemplate a legitimisation of scientific whaling and gives them coastal whaling,” states Patrick Ramage of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. “For any government serious about whale conservation, it’s going to be difficult to sign up to a package that means the end of the moratorium—with whatever weasel words—and a legitimisation of both coastal and scientific hunting.”
“World Wildlife Fund is glad to see the IWC taking steps toward ending the deadlock on commercial whaling, and to ending commercial whaling under the guise of science once and for all, but these compromise packages give too much to the whalers and not enough to whale conservation,” said Dr. Susan Lieberman, director of WWF International’s Species Programme. “What is needed is a plan to put an immediate halt to all scientific whaling, which simply has no place in the 21st Century.”
“Greenpeace is calling on President Obama to take just a few minutes to end this potentially damaging negotiation by ensuring a new IWC Commissioner is appointed with experience in high-level international negotiations to ensure the US position in these negotiations matches the agenda of the Obama Administration and the American people.”
Iceland Seeks Its Own Deal?
Volume LXI · No. 1a · Rome, Italy · Monday March 9, 2009
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As NGOs have pointed out, if the IWC establishes a deal with Japan to allow violation of the two-decades-old moratorium on commercial whaling, other nations will quickly follow suit to gain their own deals.
Enter Iceland, which indeed increased their own illegal whaling quotas six-fold within days of the announcement of the Hogarth Deal for Japan. Clearly, Iceland is positioning itself to get its own deal with the IWC, racking up obscene sized quotas so they can negotiate down to somewhat more reasonable levels to kill endangered fin whales and depleted minke whales.
In response to public outcry both inside and outside Iceland, the new Icelandic government proposed to review the inflated whale numbers, but quickly retreated by allowing the quotas to stand for at least the coming year. The original annual quota was for 38 minke whales and no endangered fin whales, but the new quotas will allow the slaughter of 100 minke whales and 150 endangered fin whales. Fin whales are listed as endangered world-wide by the IUCN.
To their credit, the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Finland and Sweden presented a demarche to the Icelandic government, expressing “extreme disappointment” in the new quotas.
Two British supermarket chains, Waitrose Ltd. and M&S, have written the Icelandic government expressing their dismay over the new quotas and threatening to boycott Icelandic fish products. The Icelandic tourism industry is also opposed to the whaling, fearing the negative impact of whaling on tourists.
Japan Arrests Greenpeace Activists
Volume LXI · No. 1a · Rome, Italy · Monday March 9, 2009
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Two Japanese activists from Greenpeace have been arrested by Japan when they reported the routine theft of whale meat by Japanese whalers.
Talk about “killing the messengers”!
Greenpeacers Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki are now being prosecuted, and risk up to ten years in jail if convicted, after they exposed a major corruption scandal surrounding the Japanese government-sponsored whaling program. They had reported their findings to Japanese police with the intention of raising awareness about the abuse of taxpayer subsidies, and in order to prompt an independent investigation into the whalers’ theft of whale meat.
Sato and Suzuki discovered firm evidence that cardboard boxes containing whale meat, from Japan’s so-called “scientific” whaling operation in the Southern Ocean, were being secretly shipped to the homes of whaling fleet crew—and then sold for personal profit. Junichi Sato delivered a box of this whale meat to the Tokyo Prosecutors’ Office in May 2008, and filed a report of embezzlement. However, the embezzlement investigation was dropped on 20 June—the same day that both men were arrested and then held for 26 days before being charged with theft and trespass.
They are now under house arrest while the legal wrangling drags on.
Japan’s Litany of Deceit
Volume LXI · No. 1a · Rome, Italy · Monday March 9, 2009
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During the past year of negotiations with Japan to achieve the Hogarth Deal, Japan has repeatedly demonstrated its contempt for the process and for the majority of the IWC countries by:
- Pursuing its so-called “Scientific” whaling scheme full-bore in the Antarctic.
- Accepting 77 tons of whale meat imported from Iceland and Norway.
- Continuing so-called “scientific” whaling in the North Pacific, which includes killing coastal whales.
- Continuing to kill over 22,000 coastal dolphins and small cetaceans in the cruelest manner imaginable.
- Refusing to label or remove toxic dolphin and whale meat from their markets, effectively poisoning their own people.
ECO observes that this cannot be construed as “negotiating in good faith.”
Japan Threatens to Block June Meeting
Volume LXI · No. 1a · Rome, Italy · Monday March 9, 2009
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True to form, the Japanese representative for the IWC states that the IWC should stop meeting if a bid to bridge the gulf between pro- and anti-whaling nations fails in Rome this week.
“This year is a moment of truth for the IWC,” Joji Morishita, a counselor with Japan’s Fisheries Agency, told reporters. “This is almost a final try. If we fail, we will need a cooling-off period.” That could mean meetings stop for several years, he said.
Will the IWC put up with the Japan Fisheries Agency’s constant threats and bow to the pressure by approving the insidious Hogarth Deal?