Richard Lloyd Parry, The Independent 5 Oct 00;
After days of emotional and frequently acrimonious debate, Japan and Norway won their struggle yesterday to prevent the creation of a huge sanctuary for whales in the South Pacific.
After days of emotional and frequently acrimonious debate, Japan and Norway won their struggle yesterday to prevent the creation of a huge sanctuary for whales in the South Pacific.
The proposal, supported by Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, failed to win the three-quarters of votes needed at the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Adelaide.
Japanese officials were triumphant over the defeat of a measure that would have further restricted their ability to bypass the 14-year old moratorium on commercial whaling. But Robert Hill, the Australian environment minister who proposed the whale sanctuary, said the anti-whaling lobby would not give up. "The South Pacific wants this sanctuary and we will ensure the South Pacific gets it."
The moratorium on commercial whaling was agreed by the IWC in 1986, after several species were driven close to extinction. But Japan and Norway continue to kill hundreds of whales, illegally, and under a loophole in the IWC moratorium enabling whaling for "scientific research".
Supporters of the defeated measure say whale sanctuaries in the Indian Ocean and in the Antarctic Southern Ocean feeding grounds should be extended to the breeding grounds in the Pacific.
Japan and Norway says the threat of extinction has passed and opposition to whaling is based on sentimentalism. "If Japan has sustainable resources of whales, then why must its right to use that resource be taken away just because people think whales are cute?" asked an official with the ministry of agriculture and fisheries in Tokyo.
But the IWC's scientific committee said the real number of minke whales in the southern hemisphere could be "appreciably lower" than the estimate of 760,000. Eighteen of the 35 IWC members eligible to vote supported the proposal for a sanctuary, 11 opposed it and six abstained or failed to vote.
Japan was supported by Dominica, Guinea and the Caribbean states of Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia and St Vincent, countries with no whaling traditions who get substantial foreign aid from Tokyo. Patrick Ramage of the International Fund for Animal Welfare said: "This wasn't a vote, it was an auction, and Japan was the winning bidder."
