Post by LSDeep on Jun 27, 2006 8:12:46 GMT -5
Using a series of international aid ‘bribes’ to countries without coasts, Japan is turning the tide on what was once a conservation success story
By Torcuil Crichton
The impossible seems likely. The ban on commercial whale hunting, the most successful conservation measure of the 20th century, is in danger of being overturned, if not in a few years then within a human lifespan.
Tuesday’s largely symbolic vote at the close of the International Whaling Commission, proclaiming the whaling ban “no longer necessary”, was more than a pyrrhic victory for its sponsor, Japan.
A 75% majority would have been needed to overturn the commercial ban but given that it has been under assault from Japan since it was imposed in 1986, the conference on St Kitts in the Caribbean represents a crossroads in the battle to save the whale.
Japan has spent the past decade recruiting small Caribbean, Pacific and African countries to join the IWC and vote against conservation measures. Anti-whaling campaigners are relieved that Japan lost four substantive votes on whaling and only prevailed – by one vote – on the non-binding declaration that reiterates the principles of the IWC. The symbolism is not lost on anyone, least of all the Japanese politicians milking a propaganda victory.
After all, it has cost the Japanese government plenty of yen to buy the IWC. The Japanese government denies using aid packages to bribe some of the IWC’s 70 members into the pro-whaling camp, but the evidence is convincing. Japan admits donating £2.9 million in “marine aid” to St Kitts and Nevis, this year’s conference host. Another £5.6m went to Nicaragua . These new IWC members have no whaling history but they do have a coast; landlocked Mongolia and Mali also joined after receiving Japanese aid and voted accordingly.
After allegations that Togo’s $10,000 membership fee was paid in cash at the conference door, Australian environment minister Ian Campbell called the IWC corrupt. He thinks Japan’s tactics will rebound, but on the shopping list for next year’s marine aid packages are Samoa and Algeria, which environmentalists believe Japan is trying to recruit.
The success of the Save The Whale campaign in the 1970s, which defined Greenpeace in its early days, is now taken for granted. Some were never convinced. Most scientists, and any Norwegian, say the ban is based on emotion, not facts. Norway, where whale killing is the norm, ignores the moratorium but restricts hunting to the plentiful Minke whale.
Why Japan pursues its goal with such vigour is harder to fathom. More than £54 million of public money has been spent in the past six years on support for six Caribbean countries while the Japanese public remains indifferent to whale meat as a commodity. Despite propaganda exercises to convince them that whale hunting is traditional, the meat is eaten by less than 1% of the population and surveys show scant support for the resumption of commercial whaling. It is however a matter of nationalistic pride for some of the Japanese political elite.
Japan’s case rests on culture, science, principle and propaganda. Anti-whaling activists are accused of cultural imperialism in Japan, where eating whale is a totem of national identity under siege from a hamburger culture. The Japanese say science is on their side, claiming the recovery among certain species would permit managed whaling.
There is also a strong sense that Japan has been double-crossed by the IWC. Japan agreed to a moratorium on whaling in 1986, not permanent prohibition. If anti-whaling nations have hijacked the IWC and turned it into a conservation vehicle regardless of science, Japan’s practice of buying votes, which it officially denies, is regarded as a legitimate tactic.
All eyes are now on Alaska, venue for next year’s conference hosted by the USA. The Bush administration’s tattered reputation on environmental matters does not bode well and compromise is already the agenda. The US IWC chairman, William Hogarth, says the deep divide within the whaling body has to be healed. The signals from the US are that the IWC has started to change, from being a power for conservation to re-establishing itself as an industrial regulator of the whale cull.
Japan, Norway and Iceland kill more than 2000 whales a year in the name of scientific research or tradition by exploiting a loophole in the ban that is now endorsed by nearly half of the IWC.
“We’ve gotten to an impasse,” Hogarth said, suggesting that negotiation of quota killings is what the international community should be aiming for.
Japan, its supporters in the bag, is threatening next year to block a licence that allows indigenous communities such as Alaska’s Inuit to kill a small number of whales. If Japan wants to hunt in the name of culture or science, those killings would come off its quota, said Hogarth. That sounds like a victory for Japan although pressure to resist an Alaskan compromise will be immense.
One other side-effect might be to throw a spotlight on the changing character of Japanese politics. Often portrayed in the West as a bureaucratised state run for the benefit of large business, politics also draws on a heavy dose of nationalist sentiment. The muscle-flexing involved in flouting an international whaling ban also finds expression in calls for nuclear armaments and more robust regional powerbrokering.
That frictionplate in the Sea of Japan – with China, North Korea, South Korea and Japan rubbing unkindly against each other – will be another factor in how the US deals with its whale-hunting regional ally over the next year.
The chances of overturning the moratorium are not high, so Japan will continue to evade the ban by killing for research, fielding the wrath of the world, until it has the votes it needs.
Either way, the harpoons will be sharpened and the hunt will be on in the Southern Ocean next year, just as surely as the IWC votes will be weighed by how much Japanese “marine aid” goes to members. For the whales, the omens do not look good.
25 June 2006
www.sundayherald.com/56426
By Torcuil Crichton
The impossible seems likely. The ban on commercial whale hunting, the most successful conservation measure of the 20th century, is in danger of being overturned, if not in a few years then within a human lifespan.
Tuesday’s largely symbolic vote at the close of the International Whaling Commission, proclaiming the whaling ban “no longer necessary”, was more than a pyrrhic victory for its sponsor, Japan.
A 75% majority would have been needed to overturn the commercial ban but given that it has been under assault from Japan since it was imposed in 1986, the conference on St Kitts in the Caribbean represents a crossroads in the battle to save the whale.
Japan has spent the past decade recruiting small Caribbean, Pacific and African countries to join the IWC and vote against conservation measures. Anti-whaling campaigners are relieved that Japan lost four substantive votes on whaling and only prevailed – by one vote – on the non-binding declaration that reiterates the principles of the IWC. The symbolism is not lost on anyone, least of all the Japanese politicians milking a propaganda victory.
After all, it has cost the Japanese government plenty of yen to buy the IWC. The Japanese government denies using aid packages to bribe some of the IWC’s 70 members into the pro-whaling camp, but the evidence is convincing. Japan admits donating £2.9 million in “marine aid” to St Kitts and Nevis, this year’s conference host. Another £5.6m went to Nicaragua . These new IWC members have no whaling history but they do have a coast; landlocked Mongolia and Mali also joined after receiving Japanese aid and voted accordingly.
After allegations that Togo’s $10,000 membership fee was paid in cash at the conference door, Australian environment minister Ian Campbell called the IWC corrupt. He thinks Japan’s tactics will rebound, but on the shopping list for next year’s marine aid packages are Samoa and Algeria, which environmentalists believe Japan is trying to recruit.
The success of the Save The Whale campaign in the 1970s, which defined Greenpeace in its early days, is now taken for granted. Some were never convinced. Most scientists, and any Norwegian, say the ban is based on emotion, not facts. Norway, where whale killing is the norm, ignores the moratorium but restricts hunting to the plentiful Minke whale.
Why Japan pursues its goal with such vigour is harder to fathom. More than £54 million of public money has been spent in the past six years on support for six Caribbean countries while the Japanese public remains indifferent to whale meat as a commodity. Despite propaganda exercises to convince them that whale hunting is traditional, the meat is eaten by less than 1% of the population and surveys show scant support for the resumption of commercial whaling. It is however a matter of nationalistic pride for some of the Japanese political elite.
Japan’s case rests on culture, science, principle and propaganda. Anti-whaling activists are accused of cultural imperialism in Japan, where eating whale is a totem of national identity under siege from a hamburger culture. The Japanese say science is on their side, claiming the recovery among certain species would permit managed whaling.
There is also a strong sense that Japan has been double-crossed by the IWC. Japan agreed to a moratorium on whaling in 1986, not permanent prohibition. If anti-whaling nations have hijacked the IWC and turned it into a conservation vehicle regardless of science, Japan’s practice of buying votes, which it officially denies, is regarded as a legitimate tactic.
All eyes are now on Alaska, venue for next year’s conference hosted by the USA. The Bush administration’s tattered reputation on environmental matters does not bode well and compromise is already the agenda. The US IWC chairman, William Hogarth, says the deep divide within the whaling body has to be healed. The signals from the US are that the IWC has started to change, from being a power for conservation to re-establishing itself as an industrial regulator of the whale cull.
Japan, Norway and Iceland kill more than 2000 whales a year in the name of scientific research or tradition by exploiting a loophole in the ban that is now endorsed by nearly half of the IWC.
“We’ve gotten to an impasse,” Hogarth said, suggesting that negotiation of quota killings is what the international community should be aiming for.
Japan, its supporters in the bag, is threatening next year to block a licence that allows indigenous communities such as Alaska’s Inuit to kill a small number of whales. If Japan wants to hunt in the name of culture or science, those killings would come off its quota, said Hogarth. That sounds like a victory for Japan although pressure to resist an Alaskan compromise will be immense.
One other side-effect might be to throw a spotlight on the changing character of Japanese politics. Often portrayed in the West as a bureaucratised state run for the benefit of large business, politics also draws on a heavy dose of nationalist sentiment. The muscle-flexing involved in flouting an international whaling ban also finds expression in calls for nuclear armaments and more robust regional powerbrokering.
That frictionplate in the Sea of Japan – with China, North Korea, South Korea and Japan rubbing unkindly against each other – will be another factor in how the US deals with its whale-hunting regional ally over the next year.
The chances of overturning the moratorium are not high, so Japan will continue to evade the ban by killing for research, fielding the wrath of the world, until it has the votes it needs.
Either way, the harpoons will be sharpened and the hunt will be on in the Southern Ocean next year, just as surely as the IWC votes will be weighed by how much Japanese “marine aid” goes to members. For the whales, the omens do not look good.
25 June 2006
www.sundayherald.com/56426