Yahoo News 25 Jun 09;
FUNCHAL, Portugal (AFP) – The International Whaling Commission's annual conference ended in disarray Thursday, keeping in place a ban on commercial whaling amid deep rifts between hunters and conservationists.
The commission's new chairman said the IWC should now question its role as the conference on the Portuguese island of Madeira wrapped up a day early with delegates agreeing only to extend negotiations on whaling for another year.
"We have to re-establish a consensus on what the IWC is and should do, and there are at least two contradictory perceptions to answer that question," said Cristian Maquieira, who was elected chairman during the talks this week.
Joji Morishita, a senior official with the Japanese delegation, said the commission should approve limited commercial whaling by next year, adding: "Without that... the future of the IWC is seriously in doubt."
Conservation groups were also angry, with Greenpeace saying: "After 12 months of talking... all the IWC has achieved is another 12 months of talking."
The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) said it "deeply laments the fact that not a single of the important whaling topics was resolved."
The IWC was set up in 1946 by 15 whale-hunting nations in order to manage a whale population that was being threatened by the fishing industry. The body now has 85 members and has taken an increasingly conservationist approach.
In 1986, it instituted a ban on commercial whaling that still stands today.
The commission has been deadlocked in recent years by divisions between countries such as Japan that say the dangers of whaling are exaggerated and other nations like Australia which want the whaling ban to be kept in place.
Maquieira said a compromise was "not impossible" but would be very tough.
In a further sign of divisions, delegates failed to agree Thursday on whether Denmark could resume limited hunting of humpback whales off the coast of Greenland as part of "aboriginal" subsistence hunting by local communities.
"As it has not been possible to reach a consensus on Denmark's request, an extraordinary meeting will be organised to discuss the matter again," Portuguese commissioner Jorge Palmeirim told AFP.
"There is no other option but to postpone the matter," he said.
Denmark had proposed to hunt 10 humpbacks a year off Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory.
Environmental campaigners, who are against Denmark's proposal, were angered by the failure of the countries present to vote on the issue.
Commercial hunting of humpbacks has been banned since 1966 but Greenland continued to capture the marine mammals until 1987, when the moratorium was extended to "aboriginal" subsistence hunting.
Some European delegates at the IWC conference had deemed the proposal unacceptable, arguing that Denmark had failed to prove that Greenland's native Inuit populations had greater need of whale meat.
Whaling body skirts divisive Greenland request
Shrikesh Laxmidas, Reuters 25 Jun 09;
FUNCHAL, Portugal (Reuters) - The International Whaling Commission (IWC) on Thursday postponed a decision on Greenland's request to hunt 10 humpback whales, after failing to create a consensus between pro and anti-whaling nations.
IWC chairman Bill Hogarth said that due to the lack of consensus the body decided to appoint a scientific committee to provide further data on Greenland's request.
Greenland's bid for the aboriginal subsistence hunting has been one of the contentious issues at the IWC annual meeting, as the body struggles to marry views of anti-whaling nations such as Australia and pro-whaling countries Japan, Norway and Iceland.
A day earlier, IWC delegates also failed to find a compromise between pro- and anti-whaling nations on how to merge their views, extending for a year a deadline to decide on the future of the IWC if no agreements can be made.
The Greenland request even split 23 European Union members that usually vote as a bloc against whaling, with sources at the meeting saying Germany and the United Kingdom strongly opposed the bid, while others changed their positions over the week.
"The EU vote was split ... but I think it is good that we now have a scientific group to discuss the Danish wish," German Delegate Gert Lindermann said. Greenland is a self-governing state of Denmark.
Germany believes Greenland has not demonstrated its need for the humpback whaling quota, but said the new committee can be a forum for it do so, he added.
A moratorium on commercial whaling was agreed in 1986, but Japan continues to skirt it for scientific research, while Iceland and Norway, simply ignore it and harpoon whales for commercial use.
Aboriginals in Greenland, Russia and Alaska have, however, special permissions to hunt whales for subsistence ends. Greenland has a quota to hunt 200 mink whales, 19 fin whales and 2 bowhead whales every year.
Some conservation groups believe humpback whales are a vulnerable species, while others say that Greenland is abusing its aboriginal's rights for subsistence whaling.
The IWC decision to postpone Greenland's bid divided conservation groups at the meeting, some welcomed it while others said it was a stalling tactic.
"While we are pleased that the proposal has not been approved, we see the IWC decision to not make a decision on this matter and simply create a panel is simply outrageous," said Nicolas Entrup of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS).
(Editing by Axel Bugge and Matthew Jones)
Whale chief mulls ending hunt ban
Richard Black, BBC News 26 Jun 09;
The outgoing chair of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has suggested whale conservation could benefit from ending the commercial hunting ban.
Dr William Hogarth's remarks came at the end of this year's IWC meeting, which saw pro- and anti-whaling nations agree to further compromise talks.
A Greenpeace spokesman said the moratorium had to stay intact.
The meeting deferred a decision on a controversial bid from Greenland to add humpback whales to its annual hunt.
The Greenland Inuit are one of the indigenous peoples granted hunting quotas because they are deemed to need whalemeat.
The meeting wrapped up a day ahead of schedule, although a small group of delegates convenes on Friday to start planning a second year of talks about a possible compromise deal between the various blocs.
The first year's discussions were supposed to reach a deal by this meeting, but the deadline proved too tight.
Sustainable yields
The 1982 commercial whaling moratorium is one of the conservation movement's iconic achievements, and environment groups and anti-whaling nations are, at least on the surface, lined up four-square behind it.
But Dr Hogarth, a US fisheries expert who led the compromise talks for the last year, suggested it could now be a problem for whale conservation.
"I'll probably get in trouble for making this statement, but I am probably convinced right now that there would be less whales killed if we didn't have the commercial moratorium," he told BBC News immediately after the meeting ended.
His argument is that Japan's hunts, conducted under a clause in the whaling convention that gives any country the right to hunt as many whales as it wants for scientific research, are essentially unregulated.
Currently Japan catches more than 1,000 whales each year; and Dr Hogarth believes use of the scientific whaling clause encourages large hunts in order to get enough samples to draw scientifically valid conclusions.
"I'm not sure you'd need nearly so many whales if it were strictly for sustainable use," he said.
The key, he suggested, was to find a way of allowing limited, tightly regulated small-scale whaling for local consumption, while outlawing large-scale, heavily commercial hunts and keeping international trade under control.
No return
The Japanese delegation has kept a low media profile during this meeting, but it is likely that Dr Hogarth's words will be well received in Tokyo as it seeks to win international agreement for introducing "small-type coastal whaling" as part of a compromise deal.
How it goes down with environmental groups is another matter.
Greenpeace oceans campaigner John Frizzell, a long-time opponent of whaling, said the moratorium had to stay.
"Lifting the commercial moratorium would be an extremely bad idea," he said.
"Before the moratorium, under the IWC's guidance and supervision, populations were driven down to commercial extinction one after the other and heavily depleted.
"The moratorium is the only management procedure that has even halfway worked, and to talk about scrapping it is going back to the old days."
Privately, some anti-whaling campaigners may be prepared to countenance a partial end to the moratorium, with strict regulations placed on catch quotas, trade and monitoring, in return for bringing scientific whaling under the IWC's control.
Sue Lieberman, head of the global species programme at WWF International, said that although Japan was not currently offering to end scientific whaling within a timeframe of a few years, progress was possible in the longer term.
"I don't think anyone should expect Japan to come forward and say 'you're right, we've been wrong all these years, we give up'," she said.
"But I think it's important to sit down with Japan and talk about it.
"It is time to give it up. Economically it makes no sense, it's not necessary for food security, it's time to leave the Southern Ocean [whale] sanctuary as a sanctuary - and I hope politically Japan will understand that."
Local needs
The meeting's other potentially contentious issue - Greenland's request to add 10 humpback whales per year to the minkes, bowheads and fin whales that the Inuit already catch - was left open after EU nations could not agree a position among themselves.
EU policy is to vote as a bloc in all international environmental agreements.
But here there was an unbridgeable split between those such as the UK who found the detail of Greenland's proposal unacceptable and others who favoured approval.
With the EU commanding so many votes in the IWC as to hold the balance of power, the option of deferring a decision, awaiting research into how much meat Greenlanders obtain from whales, poured diplomatic oil on troubled waters.
But it did not find favour with Amalie Jessen, Greenland's deputy minister for fisheries, hunting and agriculture.
"I don't think EU countries understand the needs of traditional hunters," she said.
"I have observed very little tolerance and very little understanding of our situation, and they are always coming up with new requests and questions and conditions."
Greenland's request was turned down at the last two IWC meetings, and the government cites the issue as a reason for wanting to move its whaling outside the commission's remit.
Southern climes
Away from these main issues, environmental groups were pleased to see the passage of a resolution noting that climate change will affect cetaceans, and appealing to IWC members to "take urgent action to reduce the rate and extent of climate change".
Environmental lawyers said this could be a precedent for regional fisheries management organisations, which normally shy away from discussion of climate issues.
There was also appreciation for Australia's initiation of a new research partnership in the Southern Ocean that will use exclusively non-lethal methods.
Although comment on Japan's research in the same region tends to focus on the lethal aspects, its fleet also carries an international team of scientists that documents whale numbers by sightings and other techniques.
A long-time contention of some observers has been that if countries such as Australia want Japan to stop its expeditions, they have to start funding an alternative research operation - and now that message appears to have been heard.
With Dr Hogarth's departure, the job of steering next year's negotiations between Japan and anti-whaling countries such as Australia falls to incoming chairman Cristian Maquieira, who said that on a scale of difficulty from one to 10, this was "about a 12".
"Speaking candidly, it's an organisation that has no carrots and no sticks," he said.
But the Chilean diplomat was optimistic about the negotiations
"I feel if there's one common element involved here, it's that everybody believes the status quo is no longer acceptable," he said.
Plodding whale meeting makes climate change breakthrough
WWF 26 Jun 09;
Madeira, Portugal – The International Whaling Commission adopted a major climate change resolution on the last day of its 61st meeting, although it failed to take decisions on contentious whaling issues after days of negotiations that have hampered its progress in recent years.
On Thursday, IWC member countries unanimously agreed to adopt a resolution on climate change co-sponsored by the United States and Norway. The 85-member body began its annual meeting on Monday, though it set aside most major decisions until later in the year.
The resolution states that climate change is a key threat to whales, and urges governments to commit to reducing their carbon emissions at the UN Climate meeting in Copenhagen in December. It also directs IWC to engage in external climate change meetings in the run up to Copenhagen.
“This is a very positive development that will help ensure that climate negotiations take into account impacts on biodiversity,” said Dr. Susan Lieberman, WWF International Species Programme Director. “However, members did not take action that would stop commercial whaling outside of IWC regulation, which is a fundamental problem that the IWC must address—and which continues today.”
IWC members, for example, did not take action on “scientific whaling” by Japan, which has led to the killing of thousands of whales, particularly in the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary. Under the guise of scientific research, Japan has continued to defy the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling by hunting whales in both the Antarctic and the North Pacific, claiming that these whales must be killed to answer critical management questions.
Although IWC members did not take decisions on many key whaling-related issues that have dominated negotiations during the annual meeting in past years, they did discuss another prominent whale conservation issue that needs attention – the protection of smaller whales, such as dolphins and porpoises.
That discussion coincided with the release during the meeting on Wednesday of Small Cetaceans: The Forgotten Whales, a new WWF report stating that small whales are disappearing from the world’s oceans and waterways as they fall victim to fishing gear, pollution, and habitat loss – compounded by a lack of conservation measures such as those developed for great whales.
Support for the recommendations in the report at the meeting came from Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett, who simultaneously announced an AU$500,000 pledge to the IWC for the conservation and protection of smaller whales. Meanwhile, Belgium called for a review of work on conservation and management for small cetaceans to take place before IWC 62 in 2010.
“It is time for the IWC to build on these commitments, to become a modern 21st century convention, and to dedicate itself to the conservation of all whales, great and small,” Dr. Lieberman said.
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