Chris Butler-Stroud, BBC Green Room 2 May 10;
Commercial and political interests are abusing historical whaling rights of indigenous people, says Chris Butler-Stroud. In this week's Green Room, he says that ambiguities in international regulations are creating a "dangerous and uncertain" future for whales.
When the authors of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling negotiated their first draft in 1946 and created the International Whaling Commission (IWC), they accepted that there were people, especially in the high Arctic, that relied on whales and other wildlife for their survival.
So, when the world community imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, the IWC continued its longstanding policy of allowing certain "indigenous" peoples to hunt otherwise protected whales for local use to satisfy their nutritional subsistence and cultural needs.
In doing so, they created a category of Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling (ASW).
But little did they contemplate that in the opening decades of the 21st Century, it would be acceptable for ASW whalers to sell whole whales to corporate wholesalers, with processed meat being sold in supermarkets to anyone in Greenland, including tourists.
Loose language
The concept of indigenous whalers taking enough whales to feed their family and friends appears to have been so self-evident to those early regulators that they made no attempt to define many key terms, including "aboriginal", "local use" or "subsistence".
Despite the expansion of ASW in recent decades, the IWC has still not defined those terms; nor has it ever implemented a management regime for these hunts.
Thanks to this lack of a clear regulatory framework, the establishment of ASW quotas and the operation of these hunts have become controversial issues for the IWC.
In the absence of any formal definition of "aboriginal", governments simply nominate those peoples whom they consider applicable and there is no requirement that they meet any definition of indigenous people agreed in international law based on cultural or anthropological parameters.
Following this process, the IWC has granted ASW quotas that allow the Chukotkan people of Russia and the Inuit of Alaska to take bowhead and gray whales.
Since 1983, it has also permitted "the taking by aborigines" of fin, minke and Bowhead whales in Greenland, but unlike the Alaskan Inuit, the Greenlandic Home Rule Government has exploited the ambiguities in the treaty about whose "needs" the whales are to meet.
Greenland regards the total number of "Greenlanders born in Greenland" (including non-native people) as qualifying and, is now seeking yet a further increase in its ASW quota - even though, to all appearances, the indigenous whalers and their communities have more than enough whale meat to meet their subsistence needs.
For the IWC, this poses a significant problem; its "accepted practice" has allowed whale meat from ASW hunts to be traded in order to pay hunting costs etc, but on the assumption that the trade is limited to within a small and localised group of peoples.
However, Greenland defines the whole territory of over 55,000 people as a local community.
As a result, all residents, not necessarily just the Inuit population, can consume the whale products and it is now also distributed through commercial outlets such as supermarkets.
It seems that "surplus" minke whale meat can even be sold abroad. This extensive commercialisation suggests that the whaling communities whose needs the IWC believed it was meeting have more than enough whales.
Demand and supply
Indeed, the Greenlanders kill some 4,000 small whales and dolphins annually and have not even taken all their available IWC quotas of fin and minke whales in the last 20 years.
But now, referring to its claimed "wider population", Greenland states that its existing quota does not meet its needs and it wants more whales.
Three years ago, it secured a quota of two bowhead whales and 25 more minke whales. Over the last two years, Greenland has demand an additional quota of 10 humpback whales a year.
Many EU countries, which historically have looked sympathetically at ASW requests, have expressed their concern at this insistence on even more whales for no demonstrated need, but they find themselves held hostage by Denmark and its ally, Sweden, who have been lobbying to give Greenland any quota that it specifies.
Disagreements on internal EU voting procedures required when the EU needs to act as a co-ordinated body could see Denmark and her allies trying to cause the EU to abstain rather than oppose the item when it comes up for decision this week.
The IWC Parties meeting in Florida this month will also consider proposals to legitimise the existing commercial whaling for Japan, Iceland and Norway.
The question must be asked: "What will stand in the way of Greenland or others arguing in the near future that they should be able to expand their whaling to become commercial whaling not unlike Norway and Japan?"
It seems the lid on whaling's Pandora's box is not being just slightly opened by the whalers, but is being well and truly ripped open.
This is creating a dangerous and uncertain future world for the whales and an IWC that is robbed of any real decision-making capability.
The coming year could see conservation take a back seat to back room deals and political fixes.
The only guarantee is that in 20 years' time we shall be wondering how we let our elected officials get away with it.
Chris Butler-Stroud is chief executive of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDSC)
The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website
