 More or Less Hunting?
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June 19, 2003 — Four days of bickering, threats to quit and dogged but limited progress have raised doubts about the effectiveness of the sharply divided world whaling body as it closes its annual meeting Thursday.
Pro- and anti-whaling countries have agreed on nothing this week in Berlin except for the fact that they are hopelessly split.
The highlight for the anti-whaling camp — simultaneously the low point for traditional whaling nations Japan, Iceland and Norway — was forcing through a measure Monday to beef up the protection of whales.
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Virtually every other proposal, however, ended in deadlock due to the need for a three-quarters majority to make real changes.
The gulf meant there was not even a vote on lifting the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling, the biggest bone of contention.
"I would say that it's impossible to get that majority," said Sue Lieberman of the WWF animal welfare and environmental group. "With neither side willing to compromise you're left with an impasse."
Joji Morishita, a member and chief spokesman with the Japanese delegation, said that from Tokyo's point of view, it was a "very negative" conference.
"We're very disappointed and we have to review the situation back in Tokyo and consider all the possibilities available to us," he told AFP.
It would include whether to quit the International Whaling Commission (IWC) for good, or to take other action such as refusing to pay its fees.
The IWC was set up to regulate whaling under a 1946 treaty and met for the first time two years later.
Both sides accept the situation has changed. "If we were renegotiating the treaty now this is not the one we would advocate," Lieberman said, "but it is the only one we have."
The moratorium can be circumvented. Norway has an opt-out clause and Japan permits whaling for scientific purposes, together accounting for nearly 1,500 whales a year.
Critics say whaling for research is a pretext for profit-taking hunts.
Iceland now wants to resume scientific whaling too, adding 250 more whales to the total, and hopes one day to resume commercial whaling.
Japan and its allies say whaling is a centuries-old tradition that is often vital for coastal communities and no less repugnant than killing cattle. They say whale numbers have sufficiently recovered since many species were virtually wiped out last century.
Not true, according to whaling critics, who claim the research can be done without killing and, in the words of German Consumer Minister Renate Kuenast, "the best way to use (whales) is not with a harpoon but a camera."
According to the pro-whalers, the IWC has been taken over by animal rights groups.
"The IWC does not stick to its task, which is to manage whaling," said Rune Frovik of the High North Alliance, a pro-whaling group in Norway. "We encourage the whaling nations to look at other alternatives outside the IWC."
Morishita said the approval Monday of the 'Berlin Initiative' setting up a dedicated conservation committee "confirmed the polarized situation of the IWC and dysfunctional nature of this organization."
The whaling nations have threatened not to work with the committee.
In any case, it will not have regulatory powers, so cannot force anyone to obey. Acknowledging that, the environmental group Greenpeace hauled three dead whales from the Baltic Sea to the conference center Thursday to press the IWC to back up its words on conservation with well-funded action.
Secondly, the biggest threat to whales is not hunting, but being caught up accidentally in nets; around 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die each year through accidental by-catch, according to research.
Still, Lieberman said she was "fairly pleased" with this year's conference.
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