Whalers in for a big fight
2005-06-19 09:33
Ulsan, South Korea - Whaling nations are set for a showdown with their critics in South Korea next week, and frustration on both sides is threatening to scupper an agreement designed to protect whale stocks.
The emotive issue pits pro-whaling nations such as Japan, Norway and Iceland against anti-catch countries led by Australia and New Zealand and backed by a raft of environmental organisations and conservationists.
At stake is a 19-year-old moratorium on commercial whaling that pro-catch nations say is no longer necessary because of recovering whale herds, arguing sustainable hunts should be resumed under a strict quota system.
Both sides have been lobbying support in the run-up to the International Whaling Commission meeting, with Australian environment minister Ian Campbell saying ahead of a visit to three member states this month he was on a "life and death mission for whales".
But in private, delegates concede that with neither the pro- nor anti-whaling side likely to be able to count on the three quarters majority needed to change the status quo, the meeting in South Korea's former whaling port of Ulsan will likely result in a stalemate.
The risk is Japan and other whaling nations will opt to leave the commission out of frustration at what they increasingly see as a dysfunctional body and create their own bloc for commercial whaling.
"If all anti-whaling countries become like Australia, we would have no reason to stay at the IWC. We would have to take a withdrawal card out of our pocket," said Hideki Moronuki, of Japan's Fisheries Agency.
One pro-whaling nation, Denmark, has already said it will push for the whaling ban to be lifted at the meeting, with Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller warning this week: "If we stick to the ban, the IWC will fall apart."
The 62-member IWC has since 1986 held together the moratorium on commercial whaling, although Norway opted out of the ban and continues to hunt while Japan, Iceland and two Danish territories conduct whaling under exclusions.
Japan and Iceland use a get-out clause in the moratorium allowing whaling for scientific research to cull 700 whales a year between them, with the meat mostly ending up in Japanese school dinners and in markets.
Denmark's Greenland and Faroe Islands hunt within the framework of what the IWC calls "aboriginal subsistence whaling".
Japan is expected to argue at this year's meeting that the recovery in whale populations over the last 20 years means its scientific cull of minke whales can be doubled to some 880 and extended to humpback and fin whales.
Conservationists counter that modern scientific means to monitor whale populations mean that, if anything, the cull should be scrapped and non-lethal means used to conduct experiments on the animals.
Any extension of the cull to humpback whales would be sure to anger Australia and New Zealand, where whale-watching tours bring in hundreds of millions of dollars a year.