Draft whaling deal under fire from scientists, greens

Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 21 Jun 10;

AGADIR, Morocco (AFP) – The International Whaling Commission withdrew Monday behind closed doors within minutes of kicking off a tense meeting that could end a global ban on commercial whaling.

Accredited green groups were fuming at what they called the unprecedented lockdown.

"The decision to exclude the civil society and media is a scandal," said Wendy Elliott of WWF International.

The 88-nation body is debating a proposal, put forward by the IWC's chairmen, that seeks to break a 24-year deadlock and reduce the number of animals killed.

Japan, Norway and Iceland have flouted the 1986 moratorium, harvesting more than 1,500 of the marine mammals in the 2008-2009 season alone.

Tokyo has said it is keen to find a middle ground, but drew a line.

"In these negotiations, it is impossible for Japan to accept zero catches as the final outcome," Japan's deputy agriculture minister Yasue Funayama told journalists here.

The draft deal tables reduced annual catch numbers through 2020 for four species of whales as a baseline for negotiations, in the hope of coaxing the renegades back into the IWC fold.

Under the scheme, total allowable kills in each of the first five years would be just over 90 percent of the 2008-2009 figure, dropping further from 2015 to 2020.

Led by Germany and Britain, European countries have welcomed Japan's apparent willingness to trim its kill quotas, but said that is not enough.

"Japan has signalled that they are ready to reduce their catch by about 50 percent over 10 years," said Gert Lindermanm, leader of the German delegation.

"But the numbers should lay out the path so that step by step commercial whaling should be finished."

The proposed deal would require the gradual reduction of kill quotas over a 10-year period, but says nothing about what happens after that.

It also would allow hunting in the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary, which many EU states, along with Australia, have suggested is a deal breaker.

"The IWC proposal would not curb international trade in whale products, stop hunting in sanctuaries, or eliminate scientific hunting," said Jean-Louis Borloo, France's super-minister for sustainable development, taking aim squarely at Japan.

A group of US senators urged President Barack Obama to battle any efforts to end a ban.

"The moratorium has saved tens of thousands of whales from exploitation, and we urge you to oppose any agreement that would undermine its effectiveness," 17 lawmakers wrote in a letter to Obama.

The IWC's own scientific committee, meanwhile, said in a report issued Monday that most of the catch quotas in the proposal are not sustainable.

Using a formula based on estimates of population levels, scientists calculated that the proposed catches were far too high for the North Pacific Bryde's whales, and double tolerable limits for North Atlantic fin whales and eastern North Atlantic minke whales.

Only for the central North Atlantic minke whales were the tabled suggestions well under conservation-safe limits, they found.

"Science has been sidelined during the negotiations," said Scott Baker, a marine biologist at Oregon State University and a committee member since 1994.

Like Japan's self-imposed quotas for so-called "scientific research", the new figures "don't correspond to a scientific reality," said Jean Benoit Charrassin, a researcher at France's Museum of Natural History and a long-standing IWC scientist.

The proposal pays lip service to advice from the Scientific Committee, but the IWC has yet to adopt methods its experts laid out in 1994 -- in a so-called Revised Management Procedure, or RMP -- on how to calculate safe limits and verify they are respected, he said.

Justin Cooke, a committee member from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), described the plan as a "sham."

"It gives the impression that catch limits would be based on the RMP, but in fact they are arbitrary results of negotiation."

The scientific report also underscores the problem of so-called "by-catch", the ostensibly accidental killing of whales in fishing nets.

From 1994 to 2006, Japan and South Korea each caught more than 1,000 minke whales in their coastal waters this way, according to government statistics.

DNA analysis suggests that the real number of whales killed in the same waters by by-catch is likely twice as high.

Secrecy of talks on whaling compromise condemned
Richard Black BBC News 21 Jun 10;

The annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has opened with attention focussing on a deal that could regulate whaling for 10 years.

The opening session was swiftly adjourned so that delegates could begin a day and a half of private talks.

Some observers condemned the secrecy, one commenting that recent UN talks on North Korea's nuclear programme were held in public - so why not on whaling?

Conservation groups are split on the merits of pursuing a deal.

Some argue for maintaining a hard line against all whaling, while others believe agreement could improve the current picture, where Iceland, Japan and Norway set their own quotas and run their hunts without international oversight.

Anthony Liverpool, the IWC commissioner for Antigua and Barbuda, chaired the brief opening session, and warned of hard work ahead.

"Since [the 2008 meeting in] Anchorage, we've held around 10 intersessional meetings... this illustrates how serious we are at finding a solution to the problems we face in order that the IWC can become as relevant as possible," he said.

"I do not know if we shall succeed - but I have hope."

Japan's IWC commissioner Akira Nakamae said his country would "like to respect this great effort for the future of the IWC".
Progress hopes

Japan was one of a core group of six nations that has worked intensively on the "peace proposal" since the Anchorage meeting.

Two months ago, the IWC chairman - Chilean diplomat Cristian Maquieira, who is not here, officially because of health reasons - released a draft proposal that was based on discussions held over the two years.

Under the proposal, annual quotas for Japan's Antarctic hunt would diminish from 935 minke whales now, initially to 400 and then to 200 in 2015.

Japan says these numbers are too low - but conservation groups and anti-whaling countries want to bring them down further.

They are also demanding that whalemeat must be restricted to domestic use only, with no international trade permitted.

"We really hope that the commissioners of the IWC make the progress they really need to on the deal," said Sarah Duthie, head of the oceans campaign with Greenpeace International.

"The proposal as it stands is simply not acceptable, and we need them to work hard over the coming days to to make sure that they turn it into a deal that works for whales rather than whalers," she told BBC News.

However, other environment groups are taking a less nuanced position, arguing that the 1986 global moratorium on commercial whaling must be upheld, and that conservation groups should simply be fighting to end whaling by Iceland, Japan and Norway rather than talking about any deal.

"It would legitimise commercial whaling, and it would legitimise it for 10 years, rewarding bad behaviour by countries that did not abide by the moratorium," said Andy Ottaway, director of the UK-based group Campaign Whale.

"This deal wouldn't just open the door to commercial whaling, it would kick it wide open, because South Korea has said it wants a slice of the action, and there are whaling sleeping giants out there waiting to re-start."

South Korea - whose fishing boats routinely snare small whales and where whalemeat is available in restaurants - wants the compromise document to include a measure that would grant quotas to countries where "substantial indirect catches have been identified and used as traditional food for cultural and indigenous needs".

The secret talks that threaten two decades of whale conservation
Michael McCarthy, The Independent 22 Jun 10;

The future of the international whaling moratorium, one of the world's great conservation achievements, is being decided behind closed doors today and tomorrow, after whaling's governing body went into a secret session to discuss proposals that would end it.

The plan to legalise once again the hunting of the great whales, which has been outlawed since 1986, is so contentious that the International Whaling Commission (IWC), at its meeting in Agadir, Morocco, suspended its normal open meeting yesterday, for the first time ever, to allow countries on both sides of the argument to discuss it in private. The controversial proposal would allow the three nations that continue to hunt whales in spite of the ban and in defiance of world opinion – Japan, Norway and Iceland – to do so under a new legalised regime, for 10 years, in return for cutting back on the catches they currently make each year.

Japan says it is carrying out "scientific whaling", a fiction believed by no-one; the other two countries are simply ignoring the moratorium. In recent years more than 1,000 whales have been killed annually, with more than 2,000 in the peak year of 2006.

Supporters of the plan, originally put forward by the United States as a way of securing the right to carry on whaling by its own Inuit peoples of Alaska, say it will substantially reduce the numbers of whales actually killed each year by the whaling nations. The new "quotas" of whales allowed to be killed would be a matter for negotiation within the IWC.

But opponents, which include Britain, fear that once the principle of abandoning the moratorium is conceded, it will be impossible to keep the renewed commercial hunting in check. They point out that even if the three whaling countries are still killing, the numbers of whales dying each year is but a tiny fraction of those killed annually before the ban on legal commercial whaling came in.

Yesterday Sir Paul McCartney led international calls to prevent the moratorium being scrapped, issuing a statement through the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) calling for an end to the killing of the marine mammals.

"It's time to end the cruel slaughter of whales and leave these magnificent creatures alone," the singer said. "In the 21st century how can we even contemplate killing whales – or any animal – in such barbaric ways? Governments should act on their responsibilities and protect these beautiful creatures."

The WSPA's marine mammal programme manager Joanna Toole said the latest plan could allow almost 13,000 whales to be killed over the next 10 years. "This misguided proposal would resuscitate the world's dying whaling industries and would be a huge step backwards for animal welfare and conservation globally," she said.

Robbie Marsland, UK director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), said: "Ifaw opposes commercial whaling because it is cruel and unnecessary. We urge all IWC member countries to vote the right way – to preserve the whaling ban and protect whales."

However, environment groups are not united. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Pew Environment Group and Greenpeace believe the IWC proposals could work if there were changes to ensure there was no whaling in the Southern Ocean, where Japan currently sends fleets into a whale sanctuary, and no threatened species or populations were hunted – although the three groups make it clear they still support the global moratorium on whaling.

Yesterday's meeting got off to a controversial start when, within minutes of opening the annual conference the commission's deputy chairman, Anthony Liverpool of Antigua, adjourned the open sessions for two days to give pro- and anti-whaling countries a chance to discuss whether a compromise was possible.

Calling it "fundamentally unacceptable," Wendy Elliott of WWF International said all the preparations for the meeting were held in secret, and "now is the moment to open up a transparent and honest discussion".

But in terms of what eventually happens, another issue is more important – and that is how the EU countries vote. Of the 27 member states of the European Union, 25 are also members of the IWC, and thus represent a formidable voting block which might well be able to ensure the defeat of the plan to scrap the moratorium. Discussions between EU member states were going on last night in Agadir.