The 2002 meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Japan has ended in bitter hostility, with the US and Russia’s joint application to renew permits for aboriginal subsistence hunting of bowhead whales being rejected for the second time in two days. Such permits have been never been refused at previous IWC meetings.
The Alaskan Inuit and Chukotka people of Russia applied to renew their allowance of 280 endangered bowhead whales, over five years.
But the Japanese IWC commissioner Masayuki Komatsu said: “The bowhead is still considered by IWC scientists as endangered. Yet, every year the US votes against Japan’s small-type coastal whalers’ request for a relief quota of 50 minke whales from the abundant western North Pacific stock. This hypocrisy could no longer continue.”
The US and Russia reacted with fury. “In the history of the IWC, it was the most unjust, unkind and unfair vote ever taken,” said Rolland Schmitten, the US’s IWC commissioner. “That vote literally denied people to feed their families.”
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Single vote
Late-night negotiations followed the first rejection of the permits, on Thursday. Japan offered a “compromise”: that it would reverse its position, if the US and Russia would back a request for 25 instead of 50 coastal minke.
US and Russian delegates refused. They pointed out that the bowhead quota is used entirely by small communities to survive – whereas at least some of the 25 minke wanted by Japan would be sold. A repeat US-Russian aboriginal permit request on Friday failed – by one vote.
Greenpeace claims only Japanese vote-buying made the US-Russian defeat possible. The New Zealand and Australian delegations also claim that Japan has bought IWC votes from developing countries, in return for aid.
But even Japan would only claim a symbolic victory. In fact, neither the pro-whalers or the anti-whalers, led by Australia, New Zealand, the UK and US, have managed to push through significant changes to IWC regulations for more than a decade. This pattern was repeated this year.
Shigeko Misaki, an adviser to the Japan Whaling Association, told New Scientist: “We have made no real progress – except to highlight the continued dysfunction of the IWC.”
