Deadlocked global whaling talks run aground

Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 23 Jun 10;

AGADIR, Morocco (AFP) – Negotiations on the future of commercial whaling collapsed Wednesday, with pro- and anti-whaling nations unable to break a decades-long deadlock.

Since Monday, the 88-member IWC has been debating a draft deal to suspend a 24-year moratorium on commercial whaling for 10 years in return for gradual cuts over the period in the number of whales killed.

"The proposal is a dead letter," said Gert Lindermann, the IWC Commissioner from Germany.

"We have agreed that we need a period of 'cooling off' to find out if there is real readiness to look for a compromise,' he told AFP.

"You have to put this document aside for the moment, we need a pause" Brazil's top negotiator Fabio Pitaluga told the IWC's chairman in a plenary session after two days of intense closed-door meetings.

The United States delegate lamented "the inability to find a new paradigm" and said the process "lacked political maturity."

Green groups reacted angrily to the collapse of the talks, which they blamed on Tokyo.

"The lack of sufficient flexibility shown by Japan to phase out its whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary prevented a decision from being adopted," said Sue Lieberman of the Pew Environmental Group.

Iceland, Norway and Japan have continued to use legal loopholes to sidestep the 1986 global whaling ban, harvesting more than 1,500 of the marine mammals in the 2008-2009 season alone.

The proposal would have left open the status of the moratorium after 2020.

Acting IWC chairman Anthony Liverpool said too many "major issues" remained to be resolved.

These include the status of the moratorium, the number of whales that might be killed during a temporary suspension, the status of clauses which allow countries to opt out of decisions taken by the commission, and whether whale products can be traded internationally.

Another hot-button issue is the Southern Ocean, declared a whale sanctuary in 1994.

Many anti-whaling nations -- Australia, Britain, Germany and most of Latin America -- have called on Tokyo to halt hunting in the nutrient-rich Antarctic waters.

But Japanese spokesman Glenn Inwood said this simply isn't going to happen: "That's a deal breaker," he told AFP.

Japan's negotiator Yasue Funayama agreed in the plenary session that "there seems no prospect of an agreement."

"Some members want to put a halt to all but aboriginal hunting. This position creates an impasse," she said.

"There is an absence of political will to compromise," said Geoffrey Palmer, New Zealand's top whaling diplomat and an IWC veteran.

Palmer traced a history of rancorous, accusatory talks over the last decade, and warned that the failure to reform could be "fatal" for the IWC.

He endorsed the pause, adding that the fundamental identity of the international body was now in doubt.

"Is this a treaty about the conservation of whales ... or is it a treaty about whaling and the exploitation of commercial whaling? And can it accommodate both views?" he asked the plenary session.

But Palmer -- praised by pro- and anti-whaling nations for his guidance of policy talks -- said acrimony had, in part, given way to a more civil tone of mutual respect, giving some cause for optimism.

He also lauded Japan, saying it had "showed real flexibility and a real willingness to compromise."

One new idea was tabled in the plenary on how to break the deadlock.

Monaco commissioner Frederic Briad called for all whaling -- limited by the IWC's scientifically established conservation criteria -- to be restricted to national territorial waters. The high seas, he said, should be off limits.

Of the three whaling nations, only Japan currently ventures beyond its own so-called exclusive economic zone to hunt.

But even if Tokyo is likely to reject the proposal, the mayor of the southern Japanese town featured in the Oscar-winning dolphin documentary "The Cove," said it had merit.

"I think we can praise the fact that a proposal acknowledging coastal whaling actually emerged," Kazutaka Sangen told reporters here.

Because all of Japanese whaling is conducted under the guise of scientific research, a handful of coastal cities have not been allowed to continue their whaling traditions.

Victory for anti-whaling campaigners
Michael McCarthy, The Independent 24 Jun 10;

The controversial attempt to scrap the 24-year-old international moratorium on commercial whaling collapsed yesterday, to the delight of anti-whaling campaigners and the frustration of Japan, Norway and Iceland, the three countries which continue to hunt whales in defiance of world opinion.

Delegates from the 88 member states of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), meeting in Agadir, Morocco, were unable to reach agreement, after two days of talks behind closed doors, on the three-year-old proposal to abandon the official whaling ban in exchange for smaller, agreed kills by the whaling states. Britain was part of a European Union group that strongly opposed the plan.

The issue is now off the agenda for at least a year, until the next meeting of the IWC, but the result was greeted as a triumph by some environment groups who feared that the deal would put the future of the great whales in jeopardy once again.

"We have won the battle to keep the ban in place, but we must continue to fight to win the war on all whaling," said the chief executive of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, Chris Butler-Stroud. "Yes, the moratorium still stands but we must not forget that Japan, Iceland and Norway continue to whale outside of the sanction of the IWC, and that is a situation that has to change. Their whaling activities must come to an end once and for all."

The leader of the British delegation at the talks, the Minister for the Marine Environment, Richard Benyon, said last night: "We in the UK have been consistently clear that any new agreement must reduce the numbers of whales that are killed each year with the aim of a complete phase-out of all commercial whaling. We could not support an agreement that did not have conservation at its heart."

However, the Japanese whaling commissioner Yasue Funayama, said her country had offered major concessions to reach a compromise and blamed anti-whaling countries that refused to accept the killing of a single animal. "We must rise above politics and engage in a broader perspective," she said.

The deal which failed yesterday was originally proposed by the United States, which was seeking agreement with Japan to secure whaling permissions for its Inuit native peoples in Alaska, without the Japanese making tit-fot-tat trouble because of American support for the moratorium – something which had happened in 2002.

It would have allowed commercial whaling to be legitimised once again for a period of 10 years, with official IWC "quotas" set for the number of whales which each country would catch.

The sweetener of the deal was that these numbers would supposedly be lower than the number of whales actually being killed by Japan, Norway and Iceland outside the IWC, a figure currently running at about 1,500 a year, so in the end whales as a whole would benefit.

But no quotas had actually been agreed, and many of the anti-whaling countries thought such a deal would be virtually impossible to police, besides opening up commercial whaling to potential new participants, such as South Korea.

Whaling moratorium talks break down-delegates
Tom Pfeiffer Reuters 23 Jun 10;

AGADIR Morocco (Reuters) - Talks on replacing a moratorium on whaling with a controlled cull have hit an impasse and will be suspended for a year, delegates at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) said on Wednesday.

Negotiators in the Moroccan city of Agadir said the proposal, aimed at breaking the long-running deadlock over the emotive issue of whaling, failed because whaling countries and anti-whaling delegations could not find enough common ground.

"This means these talks are finished," said Sue Lieberman, who was heading the delegation of the anti-whaling Pew Environment Group at the talks.

One national delegate said talks on the proposed changes to whaling policy had been put on hold until the next annual session of the IWC.

"It seems this means that there is going to be a one-year break in negotiations," said Uruguayan representative Gaston Lasarte.

A moratorium on whaling has been in force for 24 years but Japan, Norway and Iceland have caught thousands of whales since the 1980s, arguing that they are not bound by a total ban despite international condemnation.

The compromise proposal under discussion at the IWC meeting would have lifted the moratorium for 10 years but imposed strict controls on the limited whaling that would then be allowed.

Some environmental groups have given qualified support for the proposal, saying if it was not possible for now to stop all whaling at least it should be limited.

However, it was opposed by supporters of whaling who said it amounted to a back-door ban on the practice, and by some anti-whaling campaigners who described it as a sell-out to the whaling lobby.

"We had two days of useful talks but we still haven't got a consensus resolution. There is an absence of political will to bridge the gaps and to compromise," said Geoffrey Palmer, head of the New Zealand delegation in Agadir.

Japan's delegation also blamed a lack of flexibility on the proposals, which were put forward by the IWC's chairman, for sinking the talks.

"Unfortunately, there are some members who are unhappy with the chair's proposal and who do not accept it as a basis for discussions," the delegation said in a statement.

(Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Noah Barkin)

Factbox: International talks on whaling break down
Reuters 23 Jun 10;

(Reuters) - Talks on replacing a moratorium on whaling with a controlled cull have hit an impasse and will be suspended for a year, delegates at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) said on Wednesday.

Here are some facts about whales and whaling:

* THE BAN:

-- Commercial whaling was banned under a 1986 moratorium but Japan culls whales for what it says is scientific research, while Norway and Iceland carry out full commercial whaling. Much of the whale meat ends up in restaurants and on dinner tables.

-- The three nations have been pushing for a formal end to the moratorium, saying stocks of some species have recovered. Their catches have strained diplomatic ties with many of their usual allies. Countries including the United States, members of the European Union, Australia and New Zealand oppose the hunts.

-- Australia filed a complaint against Japan at the world court in The Hague in May to stop Southern Ocean scientific whaling. Australia said Japan was violating the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling by killing whales for research purposes.

* OVERALL PICTURE:

-- Blue whales of the Antarctic, the biggest creature ever to live on Earth, are at less than 1 percent of their original abundance despite 40 years of complete protection. Some populations of whales are recovering but some are not.

-- Whaling nations say stocks of the small minke whale, the main species caught, are big enough to withstand their hunts.

-- The West Pacific grey whale population is the most endangered in the world. It hovers on the edge of extinction with just over 100 remaining.

-- According to the WWF, 31,984 whales have been killed by whaling between 1986 and 2008.

* WHALE POPULATIONS:

-- Here are some figures on whale populations according to the website www.coolantarctica.com. The figures are approximate.

-- Humpback whales number around 20,000.

-- Blue whales number up to 12,000 / pre-whaling 200,000-300,000.

-- Fin whales are the second largest animal in the world after the blue whale, the fastest swimming of all the large whales. Their numbers are 85 000 / pre-whaling 400,000.

-- Minke whales - There is no estimate of total global population size, but estimates from parts of the range in the Northern Hemisphere (totaling in excess of 100,000) show that it is well above the thresholds for a threatened category.

-- While declines have been detected or inferred in some areas, there is no indication that the global population has declined to an extent that would qualify for a threatened category.

NATIONAL QUOTAS:

-- JAPANESE whalers caught about 500 whales in the Antarctic this season, little more than half a target of 900 after clashes with environmentalists. It says this is part of research which is needed to understand whales' life cycles.

-- NORWAY - Norway has set a quota of 1,286 minke whales for the current summer season, the highest since Oslo resumed commercial hunts in 1993. Whalers caught 484 whales in 2009, from a quota of 885. Environmentalists say demand has tumbled.

-- ICELAND - Resumed commercial hunts in 2006 after a 20-year break. It set a quota of 100 minke whales and 150 fin whales for 2009.

Sources: Reuters/www.greenpeace.com/www.coolantarctica.com/iwc/ www.iucnredlist.org

(Writing by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit;)