Post by AtomHeartMother on Jul 20, 2004 2:46:37 GMT -5
Harpooned: the world's fight to save the whale
Why are small nations that rely on Japanese aid joining the organisation that regulates whaling?
Report by Michael McCarthy and David McNeill
19 July 2004
A step towards the return of commercial whaling will be taken this week if pro-whaling countries achieve - as many expect - their first majority voting bloc on whaling's governing body.
Japan, Norway and Iceland - all still hunting the great whales in defiance of the 18-year international moratorium on their killing - are on course to gain control of more than 50 per cent of the votes at the 2004 International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting, which begins in Sorrento, Italy, today.
Hitherto, the anti-whaling nations, led by the US, Australia, New Zealand and Britain, have held a controlling majority of IWC votes. But in a tireless diplomatic offensive, the Japanese have spent more than 10 years and many millions of pounds recruiting small nations to the IWC as whaling sympathisers, in return for substantial development aid.
The commission, which at its outset had only 30 members, now has 57, and the long game Japan has been playing may well bear fruit in Sorrento, when the pro-whalers are likely to achieve their majority at last.
Britain's Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) has tracked this process in detail, documenting how many small nations who now vote with the Japanese, such as St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua & Barbuda, have become overwhelmingly dependent on Japanese aid.
The process is continuing, and in recent months both the Pacific island state of Tuvalu and the Ivory Coast in Africa have applied to join the IWC, with Japanese prompting suspected - while Surinam is thought to be on the verge of applying.
Although the arithmetic is not yet completely certain, many observers believe that the new arrivals will tip the balance of votes. While not yet enabling them to abolish the whaling moratorium itself - that needs a 75 per cent majority vote - a simple majority of 51 per cent would be an encouraging development for the whaling countries towards that ultimate goal.
Furthermore, it would immediately give them considerable power to run the IWC the way they want. They could, for example, exclude environmental pressure groups and the media from the meeting, elect a new chairman, pass pro-whaling resolutions and annul anti-whaling ones, and generally make the IWC a body to promote commercial whaling rather than to regulate it.
"Tipping the balance of power means that whales will lose their safety net of protection, the moratorium will be under threat, and the world will once again hold its breath fearing for the future of these amazing animals," said Margi Prideaux of the WDCS.
Since the 1986 ban, Japan has engaged in what it calls "scientific whaling", designed to "monitor fish stocks and migration patterns," despite enormous flak from its political allies and international environmental groups, while Norway has continued to hunt commercially by simply entering an objection to the moratorium. Iceland has done a mixture of both. The three countries together have killed more than 25,000 whales since the 1986 ban started. Japan alone has hunted more than 5,000 minke whales, many of which have ended up on up-market restaurants' menus.
The issue of whaling in Japan is strongly bound up with nationalist sentiment and is one of the few international issues - perhaps the only issue - on which the country takes a hard line. The public face of Japan's pro-whaling lobby, Masayuki Komatsu, an ultra-nationalist and career diplomat at the Ministry of Agriculture, revels in upsetting what he contemptuously calls the "Save the Whalers" that dominate international debate on the issue. He once advised the captains of whaling ships to "blow Greenpeace protest boats out of the water" and regularly denounces what he calls the "culinary imperialism" of the West.
Japanese pro-whalers such as Mr Komatsu, who boasts the misleading title of director of fisheries research and environmental protection, believe that countries such as America, Australia and Britain, which have much more arable land for farming than Japan, are being hypocritical in their condemnation of whaling. "These countries can raise cows and sheep because they don't depend on the oceans for food," he said recently. "We don't have that luxury." Mr Komatsu has argued for years that whale numbers have increased to the point where they can safely be hunted again and that if not controlled they eat other fish because they are the "cockroaches of the sea".
Critics say the pro-whaling drive in Japan owes less to cultural traditions, however, than industrial and political lobbying. Japan's whaling "research fleet" is supported by the Institute of Cetacean Research, the main organisation behind the country's whaling programme, which argues that the population of minke whales has "risen tenfold" over the past 100 years. The institute, in turn, is backed by a lobby of nationalist politicians within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who depend disproportionately on votes from Japan's fishing communities. It is this push from the top that explains the fuss made over whaling in Japan, despite the great yawn the whole debate provokes from most ordinary Japanese, who now eat 40 times more hamburger meat than whale.
CONTINUED:
Why are small nations that rely on Japanese aid joining the organisation that regulates whaling?
Report by Michael McCarthy and David McNeill
19 July 2004
A step towards the return of commercial whaling will be taken this week if pro-whaling countries achieve - as many expect - their first majority voting bloc on whaling's governing body.
Japan, Norway and Iceland - all still hunting the great whales in defiance of the 18-year international moratorium on their killing - are on course to gain control of more than 50 per cent of the votes at the 2004 International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting, which begins in Sorrento, Italy, today.
Hitherto, the anti-whaling nations, led by the US, Australia, New Zealand and Britain, have held a controlling majority of IWC votes. But in a tireless diplomatic offensive, the Japanese have spent more than 10 years and many millions of pounds recruiting small nations to the IWC as whaling sympathisers, in return for substantial development aid.
The commission, which at its outset had only 30 members, now has 57, and the long game Japan has been playing may well bear fruit in Sorrento, when the pro-whalers are likely to achieve their majority at last.
Britain's Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) has tracked this process in detail, documenting how many small nations who now vote with the Japanese, such as St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua & Barbuda, have become overwhelmingly dependent on Japanese aid.
The process is continuing, and in recent months both the Pacific island state of Tuvalu and the Ivory Coast in Africa have applied to join the IWC, with Japanese prompting suspected - while Surinam is thought to be on the verge of applying.
Although the arithmetic is not yet completely certain, many observers believe that the new arrivals will tip the balance of votes. While not yet enabling them to abolish the whaling moratorium itself - that needs a 75 per cent majority vote - a simple majority of 51 per cent would be an encouraging development for the whaling countries towards that ultimate goal.
Furthermore, it would immediately give them considerable power to run the IWC the way they want. They could, for example, exclude environmental pressure groups and the media from the meeting, elect a new chairman, pass pro-whaling resolutions and annul anti-whaling ones, and generally make the IWC a body to promote commercial whaling rather than to regulate it.
"Tipping the balance of power means that whales will lose their safety net of protection, the moratorium will be under threat, and the world will once again hold its breath fearing for the future of these amazing animals," said Margi Prideaux of the WDCS.
Since the 1986 ban, Japan has engaged in what it calls "scientific whaling", designed to "monitor fish stocks and migration patterns," despite enormous flak from its political allies and international environmental groups, while Norway has continued to hunt commercially by simply entering an objection to the moratorium. Iceland has done a mixture of both. The three countries together have killed more than 25,000 whales since the 1986 ban started. Japan alone has hunted more than 5,000 minke whales, many of which have ended up on up-market restaurants' menus.
The issue of whaling in Japan is strongly bound up with nationalist sentiment and is one of the few international issues - perhaps the only issue - on which the country takes a hard line. The public face of Japan's pro-whaling lobby, Masayuki Komatsu, an ultra-nationalist and career diplomat at the Ministry of Agriculture, revels in upsetting what he contemptuously calls the "Save the Whalers" that dominate international debate on the issue. He once advised the captains of whaling ships to "blow Greenpeace protest boats out of the water" and regularly denounces what he calls the "culinary imperialism" of the West.
Japanese pro-whalers such as Mr Komatsu, who boasts the misleading title of director of fisheries research and environmental protection, believe that countries such as America, Australia and Britain, which have much more arable land for farming than Japan, are being hypocritical in their condemnation of whaling. "These countries can raise cows and sheep because they don't depend on the oceans for food," he said recently. "We don't have that luxury." Mr Komatsu has argued for years that whale numbers have increased to the point where they can safely be hunted again and that if not controlled they eat other fish because they are the "cockroaches of the sea".
Critics say the pro-whaling drive in Japan owes less to cultural traditions, however, than industrial and political lobbying. Japan's whaling "research fleet" is supported by the Institute of Cetacean Research, the main organisation behind the country's whaling programme, which argues that the population of minke whales has "risen tenfold" over the past 100 years. The institute, in turn, is backed by a lobby of nationalist politicians within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who depend disproportionately on votes from Japan's fishing communities. It is this push from the top that explains the fuss made over whaling in Japan, despite the great yawn the whole debate provokes from most ordinary Japanese, who now eat 40 times more hamburger meat than whale.
CONTINUED:
Why? And how can we put things back on track?
